• Journal of Institute of Convergence Technology
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

The ionic liquids are known to potential alternative solvents capable of replacing the commercial solvents in various processes including those in nuclear fuel cycle. As to the material, a number of studies have already reviewed the interesting results and addressed the spectroscopic as well as electrochemical behaviors of metal elements included in spent nuclear fuels. It has found that the important properties of metal ions in TBP dissolved ILs have led the development of alternative technologies to traditional solvent extraction processes. On the other hand, the electrochemical deposition of metal ions in ILs have been investigated for the application of the solvents to aqueous as well as to non-aqueous processes. In this work, a review on the application of ILs in nuclear fuel cycle is briefly presented to understand the notable researches on ILs focusing on aqueous processes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1998.05a
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• pp.52-57
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• 1998

In this paper, we performed a design study of a thorium fueled reactor according to the design concept of the Radkowsky Thorium Reactor (RTR) and evaluated its overall performance. To enhance its performance and alleviate its problems, we introduced a new metallic uranium fuel, uranium-zirconium hydride (U-Zr $H_{1.6}$), as a seed fuel. For comparison, typical ABB/CE-type PWR based on SYSTBM 80+ and standard RTR-type thorium reactor were also studied. From the results of performance analysis, we could ascertain advantages of RTR-type thorium fueled reactor in proliferation resistance, fuel cycle economics, and back-end fuel cycle. Also, we found that enhancement of proliferation resistance and safer operating conditions may be achieved by using the U-Zr $H_{l.6}$ fuel in the seed region without additional penalties in comparison with the standard RTR's U-Zr fuelr fuelel

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2004.02a
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• pp.140-142
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• 2004

Since the April of 1978, Korea has strongly relied on the nuclear energy for electricity generation. As of today, eighteen nuclear power plants are in operation and ten are to be inaugurated by 2015. The installed nuclear capacity is 15, 716 MW as of the end of 2002, representing 29.3% of the nation's total installed capacity. The nuclear share in electricity remains around 38.9 at the end of 2002, reaching at the level of 119 billion kWh's. New power reactors, KSNP's (Korea Standard Nuclear Power Plant) are fully based on the domestic technologies. More advanced reactors such as KNGR (Korea Next Generation Reactor) will be commercialized soon. Even though the front end nuclear cycle enjoys one of the best positions in the world, there have been some chronical problems in the back end fuel cycle. That's the one of the reason why we need more active R&D programs in Korea and active international and regional cooperation in this area. The everlasting NIMBY problem hinders the implementation of the nation's radioactive waste management program. We expect that the storage capacity for the LILW(Low and Intermediate Level radioactive Waste) will be dried out soon. The situation for the spent fuel storage is also not so favorable too. The storage pools for spent fuel are being filled rapidly so that in 2008, some AR pools cannot accommodate any more new spent nuclear fuels. The Korean Government in strong association with utilities and national academic and R&D institutes have tried its best effort to secure the site for a LILW repository and a AFR site. Finally, one local community, Buan in Jeonbook Province, submitted the petition for the site. At the end of the last July, the Government announced that the Wido, a small island in Buan, is suitable for the national complex site. The special force team headed by Dr IS Chang, president of KAERI teamed with Government officials and many prominent scholars and journalists agreed that by the evidences from the preliminary site investigation, they could not find any reason for rejecting the local community's offer.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.735-741
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• 2008

In our previous study, a surfactant-coated Candida rugosa lipase immobilized in microemulsion-based organogels was exploited for the synthesis of ethyl isovalerate. In the present study, we are focusing on the effective reuse of lipase immobilized in microemulsion-based organogels (MBGs) in terms of retainment of the catalytic activity. As water is one of the co-products in esterification reactions, the removal of water becomes a priority to allow the reaction to work in the forward direction and to prevent back hydrolysis. Taking this fact into consideration, the lipase-containing microemulsion-based organogels were given pretreatment and/or several intermittent treatments with dry reverse micellar solution of AOT in organic solvent during repeated cycles of ester synthesis. The pretreated MBGs with dry reverse micellar solution exhibited lower water content and higher initial rates of esterification in comparison with untreated freshly prepared MBGs. The esterification efficiency of untreated MBGs started decreasing after 5 cycles of reuse and was almost completely lost by the end of the $8^{th}$ cycle. In contrast, pretreated MBGs exhibited a gradual decrease in esterification efficiency after 5 cycles and retained about 80% of the initial activity at the end of the $8^{th}$ cycle. The intermittent treatment of MBGs after every 3 cycles resulted in enhanced reusability of immobilized lipase for up to 9 cycles without significant loss in esterification activity, after which it resulted in a slow decrease in activity with about 27% lower activity at the end of the $12^{th}$ cycle. Furthermore, the treatment conditions such as concentration of AOT in liquid dessicant and time of treatment were optimized with respect to our system. The granulated MBGs proved to be better in terms of initial esterification rates (1.2-fold) as compared with the pelleted MBGs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.44-60
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• 2021

In this paper, we validate the decay heat calculation capability via a two-step method to analyze spent nuclear fuel (SNF) discharged from pressurized water reactors (PWRs). The calculation method is implemented with a lattice code STREAM and a nodal diffusion code RAST-K. One of the features of this method is the direct consideration of three-dimensional (3D) core simulation conditions with the advantage of a short simulation time. Other features include the prediction of the isotope inventory by Lagrange non-linear interpolation and the use of power history correction factors. The validation is performed with 58 decay heat measurements of 48 fuel assemblies (FAs) discharged from five PWRs operated in Sweden and the United States. These realistic benchmarks cover the discharge burnup range up to 51 GWd/MTU, 23.2 years of cooling time, and spanning an initial uranium enrichment range of 2.100-4.005 wt percent. The SNF analysis capability of STREAM is also employed in the code-to-code comparison. Compared to the measurements, the validation results of the FA calculation with RAST-K are within ±4%, and the pin-wise results are within ±4.3%. This paper successfully demonstrates that the developed decay heat calculation method can perform SNF back-end cycle analyses.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.419-425
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• 2023

The Radiation and Decommissioning Laboratory of Central Research Institute (CRI) of Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) performs research to technically support the effective management of radiological hazards to avoid risks to civilians, the workers, and the environment from the radiological risks. The laboratory mainly consists of three technical groups: decommissioning and SF technology group, radiation and chemistry group, and radwaste and environment group. The groups carry out various R&D such as decommissioning, spent fuel management, radiation protection, water chemistry management, and radioactive waste management. The laboratory also technically supports the calibration of radiometric instruments as a Korea Laboratory Accreditation Scheme (KOLAS), approval for decommissioning, guidance for radioactive waste management, state-of-the-art technology evaluations, and technology transfer.

• Journal of Technology Innovation
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.131-148
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• 2002

This paper explores how international political factors influence the role of conventional external factors in the course of technological learning. The research goes on to investigate whether the role of the techno-economic factors has changed due to the involvement of international political factors in the technological learning mechanism. To this end, this paper examines how US political intervention affected Korean technological learning in the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The export policy, prior consent policy and international political influence of the US are employed as international political factors. The empirical findings show that international political factors are very likely to restrain the impact of the techno-economic factors on technological learning process. Accordingly, this paper hypothesizes that the role of techno-economic factors in the technological learning mechanism is weaker when international political intervention is involved.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.159-174
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• 2015

Remanufacturing used, end-of-life products is a complex problem involving multiple types of products that may share common parts. Recovery targets assigned by market demand and environmental legislation add more difficulty to the problem. Manufacturers now need to achieve specified take-back and recovery rates while fulfilling demands for remanufactured products. To assists in the demand- and legislation-driven remanufacturing of a family of products (i.e., multiple products that share common parts), this paper introduces a bi-objective mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model for optimizing remanufacturing. The model identifies optimal remanufacturing plans for a product family, whereby, the remanufacturer can achieve demand and recovery targets more profitably and in an environmentally-friendly manner. The model can also be used to quantify and justify the economic and environmental benefits of a product family from a remanufacturing perspective. A case study is presented for remanufacturing an alternatorfamily of products.

• Proceedings of the Korean Radioactive Waste Society Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.73-73
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• 2009

There are many factors to evaluate nuclear fuel cycle such as safety, public acceptance, economics, etc.. Transparency, proliferation, environment issues, public acceptance and safety are essential to expansion of nuclear industry and proliferation resistance is one of key constraints in the deployment of advanced nuclear energy systems. Proliferation resistance is being considered as one of the most important factors in assessing advanced and innovative nuclear systems. IAEA defmes proliferation resistance as characteristics of nuclear energy system that impedes the diversion or undeclared production of nuclear material [1]. Barriers to proliferation is consist of intrinsic and extrinsic barriers(institutional measures). Intrinsic barriers are characterized in material barriers and technical barriers in general. Material barriers is intrinsic, or inherent, qualities of materials that reduce the inherent desirability or attractiveness of the material as an explosive. Isotopic, chemical, radiological, mass and bulk, detectability barriers are considered as material barriers attributes [2]. Proliferation resistance is examined for several nuclear fuel cycles based on previous study which is focused on the intrinsic barriers [3-4]. Pyroprocessing and DUPIC are considered as reprocessing technologies in Korea and the PWR direct disposal is considered. Comparative assessments of the proliferation attributes and merits of different fuel cycle systems will be performed and the optimal back-end fuel cycle and strategy will be proposed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.721-729
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• 1995

The Korean optimal nuclear fuel cycle strategy from the year 2000 to 2030 is derived using linear programming. The fuel cycle cost, the cost uncertainty, and the natural uranium consumption are used as the criteria for the optimization. These objectives are compromised by fuzzy decision-making technique which maximizes the minimum degree of satisfaction among the three objectives. The options for the back-end fuel cycle are direct disposal, reprocessing, and DUPIC. The optimal fuel cycle strategy of Korea is to start reprocessing in around 2010 and increase its capacity with the maximum of 800 tHM in around 2025, and to star DUPIC processing in 2025. The cot uncertainty and the natural uranium consumption of the optimal fuel cycle strategy are reduced by 7.1％ and 6.1％, respectively, at the cost penalty of 5.4％ compared with the cost-only optimal solution.