• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.343-356
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• 2016

The Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) has developed a dual-purpose metal cask for the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel that has been generated by domestic light-water reactors. The metal cask was designed in compliance with international and domestic technology standards, and safety was the most important consideration in developing the design. It was designed to maintain its integrity for 50 years in terms of major safety factors. The metal cask ensures the minimization of waste generated by maintenance activities during the storage period as well as the safe management of the waste. An activation evaluation of the main body, which includes internal and external components of metal casks whose design lifetime has expired, provides quantitative data on their radioactive inventory. The radioactive inventory of the main body and the components of the metal cask were calculated by applying the MCNP5 ORIGEN-2 evaluation system and by considering each component's chemical composition, neutron flux distribution, and reaction rate, as well as the duration of neutron irradiation during the storage period. The evaluation results revealed that 10 years after the end of the cask's design life, $^{60}Co$ had greater radioactivity than other nuclides among the metal materials. In the case of the neutron shield, nuclides that emit high-energy gamma rays such as $^{28}Al$ and $^{24}Na$ had greater radioactivity immediately after the design lifetime. However, their radioactivity level became negligible after six months due to their short half-life. The surface exposure dose rates of the canister and the main body of the metal cask from which the spent nuclear fuel had been removed with expiration of the design lifetime were determined to be at very low levels, and the radiation exposure doses to which radiation workers were subjected during the decommissioning process appeared to be at insignificant levels. The evaluations of this study strongly suggest that the nuclide inventory of a spent nuclear fuel metal cask can be utilized as basic data when decommissioning of a metal cask is planned, for example, for the development of a decommissioning plan, the determination of a decommissioning method, the estimation of radiation exposure to workers engaged in decommissioning operations, the management/reuse of radioactive wastes, etc.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.209-221
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• 1994

In the case of a severe accident of a nuclear power plant, the whole body dose and the relative importance of the radionuclides during the lifetime of an exposed person were estimated for each exposure pathway with distances from the release point. The external exposure pathways due to immersion of radioactive cloud and deposition of radioactive materials on the ground, and the internal exposure pathways due to inhalation and ingestion of contaminated foodstuffs were considered. The effects due to the ingestion of contaminated foodstuffs were estimated considering the variation of radioactive concentration in the foodstuffs according to deposition time and elapsed time after deposition using a dynamic ingestion pathway model applicable to Korean environment, named 'KORFOOD'. As the results up to 80 km from the release point, the effects due to ingestion of contaminated foodstuffs showed the highest contribution to total exposure dose. The contribution of I isotopes was the highest in the case of the external dose due to immersion of radioactive cloud and internal dose due to inhalation. The contribution of Cs isotopes was highest in the case of the external dose due to deposition of radioactive materials on the ground. In the case of the internal dose due to ingestion of contaminated foodstuffs, Cs deposition in summer and Sr deposition in winter, respectively, were the most dominant radionuclide to whole body.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.293-299
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• 2016

$^{137}Cs$ was investigated in river bottom sediments located in South-Han River basin and it was compared with international case studies to estimate the concentration level of $^{137}Cs$ in river sediment of Korea. The obtained values of $^{137}Cs$ which was analyzed by gamma-ray spectrometry were in the range of <$MDA{\sim}3.80{\pm}0.14Bq/kg{\cdot}dry$ and similar to the $^{137}Cs$ activities in soil of Korea. According to international case studies, $^{137}Cs$ activities were between 3.7 to $15,396Bq/kg{\cdot}dry$, when pollutants such as nuclear power plant accidents and radiation leaks were present near the rivers. The $^{137}Cs$ activities showed a variety of distribution depending on the country, when pollution occurs and survey time. Also, $^{137}Cs$ activities of river sediments without pollution sources were mostly less than $10Bq/kg{\cdot}dry$ in other countries. It was comparable with the obtained $^{137}Cs$ activities in this study. The obtained values provide useful information on the background concentration of $^{137}Cs$ in river sediment and will be able to use a basis for determining contamination of $^{137}Cs$ in the river.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.18 no.2_spc
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• pp.291-303
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• 2020

The Kori-Unit 1 nuclear power plant, which is scheduled to be decommissioned after permanent shutdown, is expected to generate large amounts of various types of radioactive waste during the decommissioning process. Among these, nuclear reactors and internal structures have high levels of radioactivity and the dismantled structure must have the proper size and weight on the primary side. During decommissioning, it is important to prepare an appropriate and efficient disposal method through analysis of the disposal status and the legal restrictions on wastes generated from the reactors and internal structures. Nuclear reactors and internal structures generate radioactive wastes of various levels, such as medium, very low, and clearance. A radiation evaluation indicates that wastes in the clearance level are generated in the reactor head and upper head insulation. In this study, a clearance waste safety evaluation was conducted using the RESRAD-RECYCLE code, which is a safety evaluation code, based on the activation evaluation results for the clearance level wastes. The clearance scenario for the target radioactive waste was selected and the maximum individual and collective exposure doses at the time of clearance were calculated to determine whether the clearance criteria limit prescribed by the Nuclear Safety Act was satisfied. The evaluation results indicated that the doses were significantly low, and the clearance criteria were satisfied. Based on the safety assessment results, an appropriate metal recycle and disposal method were suggested for clearance, which are the subject of the deregulation of internal structures of nuclear power plant.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.193-200
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• 2005

[ $^{14}C$ ] and $^{3}H$ in the evaporator bottom (EB) discharged from the Nuclear power plant (NPP) were extracted simultaneously into a gaseous $^{14}CO_{2}$ and liquefied HTO by using the chemical oxidation, which is the method to oxidize samples completely using potassium persulfate and sulfuric acid. The extracted $^{14}C$ and $^{3}H$ were counted by the liquid scintillation counter (LSC) after the quench correction. To examine the recovery of $^{14}C$ using the radioactive standards, $Na_{2}^{14}CO_{3}$, $^{14}C-alcohol$, and $^{14}C-toluene$ as $^{14}C$, and HTO as $^{3}H$ were used. Also, the most suitable method for oxidizing $^{14}C-toluene$, which is difficult to be oxidized, was investigated through FT-IR spectra according to the concentration of sulfuric acid. With the identical method, $^{14}C$ and $^{3}H$ in the EB generated in the NPP were assayed in the range of $8.35{\sim}l.38{\times}10^3$ Bq/g and $2.46{\times}10^2{\sim}1.40{\times}10^4$ Bq/g, respectively.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.103-111
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• 2020

Pulling-type cutting devices, which use a diamond wire saw, have been used generally for cutting concrete structures. In this study, a pushing-type cutting device with a collection cover was developed by overcoming the disadvantages of pulling-type devices. In this device, dry or liquid methods can be selected to cool frictional heat. Operation and leakage tests of the dust generated during the dismantling of a concrete structure were carried out, confirming the suitable operation of the fabricated cutting device; the leakage rate was approximately 1.7%. For a conservative evaluation, the internal dose of workers was estimated in dismantling the core center part of biological shield concrete with a specific activity of 99.5 Bq·g^-1. The committed effective dose per worker was 0.25 mSv. The developed cutting device contributed to reducing radioactive concrete waste and minimizing worker exposure due to its easy installation. Therefore, it can be utilized as a cutting apparatus for dismantling not only reinforced concrete structures but also radioactive biological shield concrete in nuclear power plant decommissioning efforts.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.208-213
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• 2013

The suitability of the site criteria is a basic requirement for securing safety of nuclear power plants. The suitability should be confirmed through the estimation of environmental radiation effects at the exclusion area boundary under the severe weather conditions. In this study, field tracer experiments over short range of 1 km radius under severe weather conditions were conducted at flat area in Daejeon. Severe weather conditions are represented with stable atmospheric condition and low wind speed. In general, the condition is appeared at clean night time with weak wind. The analysis of the measured distribution of the released tracer gas shows two big differences between the results of the past experiments conducted under the favorable weather conditions. One is the difficulty of finding the typical distribution of the released tracer gas with peak concentration in the downwind direction. The other one is the appearance of the contour of the concentration of tracer gas at several hundred meters even though the gas released at 10 m height over the ground.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.19 no.1 s.71
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• pp.93-103
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• 2006

It is absolutely essential that safety assessment of the containment buildings during service life because containment buildings are last barrier to protect radioactive substance due to the accidents. Therefore, this study describes an enhanced degenerated shell finite element(FE) which has been developed for nonlinear FE analysis of reinforced concrete(RC) containment buildings with elasto-plastic material model. For the purpose of the material nonlinear analysis, Drucker-Prager failure criteria is adapted in compression region and material parameters which determine the shape of the failure envelop are derived from biaxial stress tests. Reissner-Mindlin(RM) assumptions are adopted to develop the degenerated shell FE so that transverse shear deformation effects is considered. However, it is found that there are serious defects such as locking phenomena in RM degenerated shell FE since the stiffness matrix has been overestimated in some situations. Therefore, shell formulation is provided in this paper with emphasis on the terms related to the stiffness matrix based on assumed strain method. Finally, the performance of the present shell element to analysis RC containment buildings is tested and demonstrated with several numerical examples. From the numerical tests, the present results show a good agreement with experimental data or other numerical results.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.239-245
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• 2010

There are 11,811 LWR spent fuels stored at reactor sites, as of 2009. Source terms based on reference spent fuel which represents entire spent fuels with bounding values in the aspect of source term has been applied to a design of nuclear installations, instead of those which are generated by weighting respective source term for each spent fuel. Simplified regression models to estimate total decay heat, radioactivity, and ingestion hazard index for spent fuel from Westinghouse-type reactors were developed in this study, because it can be used as a fundamental model for weighting source term for respective spent fuel to exclude conservativeness in source terms. It was found that the estimated source terms agreed with calculated value from ORIGEN-ARP within 5%. It was also found that the conservativeness could be excluded if the weight source terms were used as reference source term in the design. Therefore, it is expected that the developed regression model could be widely used in the conceptual design process of nuclear facilities related with storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.473-478
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• 2018

Radioactive aerosol generated in cutting and melting work during the NPP decommissioning process can cause internal exposure to body through workers' breath. Thus, it is necessary to assess worker internal exposure due to the radioactive aerosol during decommissioning. The actually measured value of the working environment is needed for accurate assessment of internal exposure, but if it is difficult to actually measure that value, the internal exposure dose can be estimated through recommended values such as the fraction of amount of intake and the size of particles suggested by the International Committee on Radiological Protection (ICRP). As for the selection of particle size, this study applied a value of $5{\mu}m$, which is the size of particles considering the worker recommended by the ICRP. As for the amount of generation, the amount of intake was estimated using data on the mass of aerosol generated in a melting facility at a site in Kozloduy, Bulgaria. In addition, using these data, this study calculated the level of radioactivity in the worker's body and stool and conducted an assessment of internal exposure using the BiDAS computer code. The internal exposure dose of Type M was 0.0341 mSv, that of Type S was 0.0909 mSv. The two types of absorption showed levels that were 0.17% and 0.45% of the domestic annual dose limit, respectively.