• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.59-72
• /
• 1996

The continuous expansions and development of nuclear power have led to generation of the significant volume of spent fuels and radioactive wastes. And so, safe and effective management of the spent fuel has been becoming internationally sensitive and significant issue since the early 1990s. Especially, more importance would be added in the view point of international politics, because of recent political changes in the countries of Eastern Europe including dissociation of the former Soviet Union and the difficulties faced by the nuclear industries worldwide. Accordingly, this paper is proposed to show an overview of national strategies and Policies on the spent fuel management, that are being assessed and carried out worldwide at this time. The overview is based on recent developments of the national strategies, their implementations and some related experiences presented in IAEA International meetings and some technical papers.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
• /
• 2007.11a
• /
• pp.305-309
• /
• 2007

FTL(Fuel Test Loop) is a facility that confirms performance of nuclear fuel at a similar irradiation condition with that of nuclear power plant. FTL construction work began on August, 2006 and ended on March, 2007. During Construction, ensuring the worker's safety was the top priority and installation of the FTL without hampering the integrity of the HANARO was the next one. The installation works were done successfully overcoming the difficulties such as on the limited space, on the radiation hazard inside the reactor pool, and finally on the shortening of the shut down period of the HANARO. The Commissioning of the FTL is to check the function and the performance of the equipment and the overall system as well. The FTL shall start operation with high burn up test fuels in early 2008 if the commissioning and licensing progress on schedule.

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

• Analytical Science and Technology
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.446-452
• /
• 2000

The simulated nuclear spent fuel (SIMFUEL) containing the platinum group elements which will not be dissolved in a nitric acid was completely dissolved with a acid digestion bomb. The metallic elements separated in the SIMFUEL were measured by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). Because the peaks of metallic elements were spectrally interfered by uranium spectrum, uranium and metallic elements were separated by cation exchange resin for Mo, Pd, Rh and Ru and by anion exchange resin for Ba, Ce, La, Nd, Rh, Sr, Y and Zr, respectively. The recovery of Mo, Pd, Rh and Ru after separation by cation exchange chromatography found to be 99-103% and anion exchange separation showed 96.5-107% of recovery except Y with the simulated solution whose concentration was similar to the spent nuclear fuel. The relative standard deviation of this method showed 1.3-6.7% in the SIMFUEL whose concentrations of metallic elements were between several $10^2-10^3$ppm.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
• /
• v.33 no.2
• /
• pp.67-76
• /
• 2008

As the first comprehensive attempt at a national implementation, this study aims at assessing the external costs of major electricity generation technologies in Korea, particularly an evaluation of the impacts on human health resulting from exposures to atmospheric radiological emissions from nuclear power plants, and a monetary quantification of their damages. The methodology used for the assessment of the externalities of the selected fuel cycles has been developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), namely the SimPacts Model Package. The model is internationally recognized as a tool which can be applied to a wide range of fuels, different technologies and locations, for an externalities study. In this study, the relevant emissions are quantified first and then their impacts on human health are evaluated and compared. The study focused on all the nuclear power plants for the last 6 years ($2001{\sim}2006$) in Korea. With respect to nuclear power, the impact analysis only focuses on a power generation, however the front- and back-end nuclear fuel cycles are not included, namely uranium mining, conversion, enrichment, reprocessing, conditioning, etc., because these facilities are not present in Korea. The analysis results show that nuclear power in general, generates low external costs. The highest damage costs from the nuclear power plants among the 4 sites in Korea were estimated to be 3.9 mills/MWh, which is about 1/20th of the result for a similar case study conducted in the U.K., implemented through the ExternE project. This difference is largely due to the number of radionuclides included in the study and the amount of released radioactive emissions based on up-to-date information in Korea. In this study, the sensitivities of the major factors for nuclear power plants were also calculated. The analysis indicates that there was around a ${\pm}3%$ damage costs variation to a ${\pm}15%$ change of the reference population density and a ${\pm}1%$ damage cost variation to a $1{\sim}30$ meters change of the effective release height, respectively. These sensitive calculations show that there is only a minor difference when the reference costs are compared.

• Analytical Science and Technology
• /
• v.22 no.5
• /
• pp.395-406
• /
• 2009

The determination of iodine in the spent nuclear fuel and the volatile behavior during its acid dissolution have been studied by NAA(neutron activation analysis) and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA). Simulated spent fuels (SIMFUELs) were dissolved in $HNO_3$(1+1) at $90^{\circ}C$ for 8 hours. The iodine remained in a dissolver solution after dissolution, and that condensed in dissolution apparatus and trapped in the adsorbent by volatilization during the dissolution were determined, respectively. The condensed iodine was recovered by the redistillation with $HNO_3$(1+1) after transfer of the dissolver solution. The iodines in the dissolver and redistilled solution were separated by solvent extraction followed by ion exchange or precipitation method and determined by RNAA (radiochemical neutron activation analysis). The ion exchange column and filtration kit used for the isolation of iodine, which were prepared with a polyethylene tube, were used as an insert in the pneumatic tube for neutron irradiation. The iodine volatilized during the dissolution of SIMFUELs was collected in a trapping tube containing Ag-silica gel (Ag-impregnated silica gel) adsorbent, and the distribution of iodine trapped in the adsorbents were determined by EPMA. The adsorbing characteristics shown with the SIMFUELs were compared with those shown with a real spent fuel from the nuclear power plant.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 2004.10a
• /
• pp.1013-1016
• /
• 2004

High level radioactive wastes, such as spent fuels generated from nuclear power plant, will be disposed in a deep geological repository. To maintain the integrity of the disposal canister and to carry out the process effectively, the emplacement process for the canister system in borehole of disposal tunnel should be well defined. In this study, the concept of the disposal canister emplacement process for deep geological disposal was established. To do this, the spent fuel arisings and disposal rate were reviewed. Also, not only design requirements, such canister and disposal depth but also preliminary repository layout concept were reviewed. Based on the requirements and the other bases, the canister emplacement process in the borehole of the disposal tunnel was established. The established concept of the disposal canister emplacement process will be improved continuously with the future studies. And this concept can be effectively used in implementing the reference repository system of our own case.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
• /
• v.6 no.4
• /
• pp.417-420
• /
• 2008

Solar electric systems have very little impact on environment, making them one of the cleanest power-generating technologies available. While they are operating, PV systems produce no air pollution, hazardous waste, or noise, and they require no transportable fuels. In PV system design, the selection and proper installation of appropriately-sized components directly affect system reliability, lifetime, and initial cost. In this research, we have studied the PWM(Pulse Width Modulation) signals. I proposed an efficient photovoltaic power interface circuit incorporated with a DC-DC converter and a sine-pwm control method full-bridge inverter. In grid-connected solar power systems, the DC-DC converter operates at high switching frequency to make the output current a sine wave, whereas the full-bridge inverter operates at low switching frequency which is determined by the ac frequency. Thus, it can reduce the switching losses incurred by the full-bridge inverter. Full-bridge converter is controlled by using microprocessor control method, and its operation is verified through computer aided simulations.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2007.05a
• /
• pp.305-308
• /
• 2007

The spacer grid assembly is one of the main structural components of the nuclear fuel assembly of a PWR. The spacer grid assembly supports and aligns the fuel rods, guides the fuel assemblies past each other during handling and, if needed, sustains lateral seismic loads. The ability of the spacer grid assembly to resist the lateral loads is usually characterized in terms of its dynamic and static crush strengths, which are acquired from tests. In this study, a finite element analysis on the dynamic crush strength of spacer grid assembly specimens is carried out and compared with test results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
• /
• 2013.02a
• /
• pp.670-670
• /
• 2013

The concept of a fusion-driven transmutation reactor based on LAR (Low Aspect Ratio) tokamak as a neutron source is studied based on ITER physics and technology. The radial build of transmutation reactor components are self-consistently determined by coupling the systems analysis with radiation transport analysis and an optimal configuration of a transmutation reactor for aspect ratio, A in the range of 1.5 to 2.0 is found. The performance of a transmutation reactor is investigated and shows that a transmutation reactor with a neutron source producing fusion power less than 150 MW can destroy the transuranic actinides contained in the spent fuels produced from more than two 1 GWe PWRs with production of the fission power being greater than 2 GW.