• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.155-159
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• 2001

Beta radiation is measured for an environmental monitoring purpose or for an internal radiation exposure monitoring of nuclear power plant's worker. In korea, strontium 89 and strontium 90 is measured for an environmental monitoring purpose. Also tritium and carbon 14 contained in urine is measured for an internal radiation exposure monitoring of nuclear power plant's worker. Because above isotopes emits low energy beta radiations having a wide range of energy, very complicated isotope separation preprocess is needed. In this study, two mixed beta emitting isotopes are measured simultaneously using a liquid scintillation counter(LSC) and analyzed by using a developed statistical method. Banded least square method is used to analyze the mixed spectrum, and the goodness-of-fitness test is proposed. Test results show that the developed procedure can be very useful for analyzing a mixed beta emitting isotopes.

• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.339-345
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• 2016

Stable water vapor isotopes have been utilized as a tracer for studying atmospheric global circulations, climate change and paleoclimate with ice cores. Recently, since laser spectroscopy has been available, water vapor isotopes can be measured more precisely and continuously. Studies of water vapor isotopes have been conducted over the world, but it is the early stage in south Korea. For vapor isotopes study, a cryogenic sampling device for water vapor isotopes has been developed. The cryogenic sampling device consists of the dewar bottle, filled with extremely low temperature material and impinger connected with a vacuum pump. Impinger stays put in the dewar bottle to change the water vapor which passes through the inside of impinger into the solid phase as ice. The fact that water vapor has not sampled completely leads to isotopic fractionation in the impinger. To minimize the isotopic fractionation during sampling water vapor, we have tested the method using a serial connection with two sets of impinger device in the laboratory. We trapped 98.02% of water vapor in the first trap and the isotopic difference of the trapped water vapor between two impinger were about 20‰ and 6‰ for hydrogen and oxygen, respectively. Considering the amount of water vapor trapped in each impinger, the isotopic differences for hydrogen and oxygen were 0.33‰ and 0.06‰, respectively, which is significantly smaller than the precision of isotopic measurements. This work can conclude that there is no significant fractionation during water vapor trapping.

• Mass Spectrometry Letters
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2011

China's rapid economic growth has resulted in significant environmental side effects. Therefore, China has been interested in reducing her dependence on foreign oil and gas by developing technologies needed for hydrogen, in addition to her increasing energy mix of nuclear and renewable energy form, such as solar and wind power. There are three isotopes of hydrogen, i.e. protium (P or H), deuterium (D), and tritium (T). Both deuterium and tritium are important materials in nuclear fuel cycle industry. Tritium is one of the critical radioactive nuclides. Planning for and implementing contamination control as a part of normal operation and maintenance activities is an important function in any hydrogen facility, especially tritium facility. The development of hydrogen isotopes analysis is the key issues in this area. Mass spectrometry (MS) with medium (about 600) and high resolution (> 1,400) is commercially available; however, the routine analysis of hydrogen isotopes is done with low-resolution MS (< 200) in China. This paper summarizes the progress of MS measurement technology for hydrogen isotope abundance in China, focusing on our lab's research program and technical status. An analyzing method has been introduced for accurate measurement of tritium abundance in the H.D.T system by low resolution MAT-253 MS. The quotient of compression ratio coefficient is determined by building up equipment for laboratory-scale preparation of secondary standard gases and by considering the difference in sensitivity between hydrogen isotopes. The results show that the measured value is reproducible within the relative error range of 0.8% for gas samples of different tritium abundance.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.155-160
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• 1999

In the natural, there exist several kinds of radioactive isotopes. From atmospheric weapon tests and then some isotopes are naturally radioactivity above all things, nuclear power plant operation and man-made radioactive isotopes concern steadily growing in the environment. During the fission process of nuclear weapon tests and nuclear power plant operation, more than 200 radioactive isotopes are generated. Among them, $^{90}Sr$ and $^{137}Cs$ has been regarded as very important isotopes due to characteristics. In this paper, a quantitative analysis method of environment low level $^{90}Sr$ is studied. Radioactivity level of the environmental $^{90}Sr$ is very low, and it emits continuous beta spectrum, and $^{90}Sr$ exists together with $^{89}Sr$, $^{90}Y$ and other radioactive isotopes. It very difficult to make the quantitative analysis of $^{90}Sr$. For the analysis of low level radioactive strontium, enrich and chemical separation of strontium from the other radioactive isotopes are needed. For the estimation of strontium recovery ratio, so called SGAT(Strontium Gravimetric Analysis Technique) was generally used among the domestic research groups, and chemical procedures were developed appropriation for the SGAT, Recently, by using ICP(Inductively Coupled atomic Plasma emission spectrophotometer), amounts of stable atoms can be measured easily and accurately to the extend of ppm or ppb. In this paper, new chemical procedures are developed to exploits the ICP technique. New developed method has simpler chemical treatment procedures and then it gives more accurate results compared with the traditional SGAT.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.517-523
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• 2017

A linear relationship between two stable water isotopes, oxygen and hydrogen, has been used to understand the water cycle as a basic tool. A slope and intercept from the linear relationship indicates what kind of physical processes occur during movement of water. Traditionally, ordinary least squares (OLS) method has been utilized for the linear relationship, but total least squares (TLS) method provides more accurate slope and intercept theoretically because isotopic compositions of both oxygen and hydrogen have uncertainties. In this work, OLS and TLS were compared with isotopic compositions of snow and snowmelt collected from the King Sejong Station, Antarctica and isotopic compositions of water vapor observed by Lee et al. (2013) in the western part of Korea. The slopes from the linear relationship of isotopic compositions of snow and snowmelt at the King Sejong Station were estimated to be 7.00 (OLS) and 7.16(TLS) and the slopes of stable water vapor isotopes were 7.75(OLS) and 7.87(TLS). There was a melting process in the snow near the King Sejong Station and the water vapor was directly transported from the ocean to the study area based on the slope calculations. There is no significant difference in two slopes to interpret the physical processes. However, it is necessary to evaluate the slope differences from the two methods for studies for example, groundwater recharge processes, using the absolute slope values.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.22-28
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• 2016

It is necessary to store and supply hydrogen isotopes for Tokamak operation. A storage and delivery system (SDS) is used for storing hydrogen isotopes as a metal hydride form. We designed and fabricated a depleted uranium (DU) bed to store hydrogen isotopes. The rapid storage of hydrogen isotopes is very important not only for safety reasons but also for the economic design and operation of the SDS. The delivery rate at the desorption temperatures without the operation of a dry pump was analyzed in comparison with that with the operation of the dry pump. The effect of the initial desorption temperatures on the dehydriding of the DU without the operation of the dry pump was measured. The effect of the initial desorption temperatures on the dehydriding of DU with the operation of the dry pump was also measured and analyzed. The primary pressure on the desorption temperatures without the operation of the dry pump was analyzed in comparison with that with the operation of the dry pump. The temperature gradient of the coil heater and the primary vessel was also analyzed. Our results will be used to develop pilot scale hydrogen isotope processes. It was confirmed that dehydriding of a medium-scale DU bed has enabled without the operation of the dry pump.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.154-161
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• 2003

We measured the permeation characteristics of water with the hydrophobic PTFE membranes dependent on water temperature to confirm the separation of oxygen isotopes using Air Gap Membrane Distillation (AGMD) and Vacuum Enhanced Membrane Distillation (VEMD). Isotopic concentrations of $H_2^{16}O$ and $H_2^{18}O$ of the permeated water vapor were measured by Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy. Concentrations of the heavy oxygen isotopes in the permeated water vapor were decreased. Isotope separation coefficients for the hydrophobic PTFE membranes were 1.004∼1.01 depending on the experimental conditions. We observed the effects of air in membrane pores on the oxygen isotope separation. Isotope separation coefficients for the hydrophobic PTFE membranes without air in pores are higher than those for the membrane with air in pores.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.3291-3300
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• 2023

Recently molybdenum alloys have been introduced as accident tolerating materials for cladding of fuel rods. Molybdenum element has seven stable isotopes with different neutron absorption cross section used in various fields, including nuclear physics and radioisotope production. This study presents separation approaches for all intermediate isotopes of molybdenum element by squared-off cascades using a newly developed numerical code with Salp Swarm Algorithm (SSA) optimization algorithm. The parameters of cascade including feed flow rate, feed entry stage, cascade cut, input feed flow rate to gas centrifuges (GCs), and cut of the first stage are optimized to maximize both isotope recovery and cascade capacity. The squared off and squared cascades are studied, and the efficiencies are compared. The results obtained from the optimization showed that for the selected squared off cascade, Mo⁹⁴ in four separation steps, Mo⁹⁵ in five steps, Mo⁹⁶ in six steps, Mo⁹⁷ in seven steps, and Mo⁹⁸ in two steps are separated to the desired concentrations. The highest recovery factor is obtained 63% for Mo⁹⁴ separation and lowest recovery factor is found 45% for Mo⁹⁵.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.81-89
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• 2019

This study deals with a process for recovering hydrogen isotopes from fusion exhaust gas. The goal of this process is to remove impurities, maximally recover only pure hydrogen isotopes. Experiments using hydrogen and deuterium were conducted to confirm the possibility of the recovery of hydrogen isotopes. In the exhaust gas containing H₂, impurities was removed in the membrane process, and only pure H₂ was recovered. And the H₂ in the exhaust gas of the He-GDC(Glow Discharge Cleaning) process was recovered using a cryogenic adsorption process. In addition, HAZOP analysis was performed for qualitative risk assessment. For scenario analysis, the damage prediction ALOHA program was used to calculate the range of influence. Finally measures were sought to improve safety.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 1999

Using the TBP slovent extraction method, a simple and precise method for determining uranium isotopes in the environment samples was developed. The soil sample was decomposed with $HNO_3$ and HF. Uranium isotopes were extracted with 15% TBP in $CCl_4$ from aqueous phase to organic phase, and Th fraction was removed with 8M HCl. Uranium fraction was purified in back extraction step with 1M HCl. Optimized electrode position conditions of uranium Isotopes were set using a new electrode position solution including a DTPA chelating agent. The new method of uranium isotopes determination was validated with a result of application to IAEA Reference Soils.