• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.15-28
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• 2019

In accordance with the decommissioning plan for the Kori Unit 1 NPP, the reactor coolant system will be chemically decontaminated as soon as possible after permanent shutdown. This study developed the chemical decontamination process though the development project of decontamination technology of reactor coolant system and dismantled equipment for NPP decommissioning, which has been carried out since 2014. In this study, Oxidation/reduction process was conducted using system decontamination process development equipment of lab scale and was divided into unit and continuous processes. The optimal process time was derived from the unit process, and decontamination agent and the number of process were derived through the continuous processes. Through the unit process, the oxidation process took 5 hours and the reduction process took 4 hours. As optimum decontamination agent, the oxidizing agent was $200mg{\cdot}L^{-1}$ Permanganic acid + $200mg{\cdot}L^{-1}$ Nitric acid and the reducing agent was $2000mg{\cdot}L^{-1}$ Oxalic acid. In the case of the number of processes, all oxide films were removed during the two-cycle chemical decontamination process of STS304 and SA508. In the case of Alloy600, all oxide films were removed when chemical decontamination was performed for three cycles or more.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.377-387
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• 2018

Korea's first commercial nuclear power plant, Kori Unit 1, was permanently shut down on June 18, 2017, after 40 years of successful operation. Kori Unit 1 plans to construct a waste treatment facility in the turbine building prior to commencement of dismantling in earnest. Various radioactive wastes are decontaminated, disassembled, cut and melted in the waste treatment facility and sent to the radioactive waste repository. The proportion of metal radioactive waste in dismantled waste is about 70%, of which large metal radioactive waste is mainly generated in the primary circuit and has high radioactivity, so radiation exposure must be managed during disassembly. In this study, the steam generators are selected as large metal radioactive waste, the exposure doses of the dismantling workers are calculated using RESRAD-RECYCLE code and the methods for reducing the exposure doses are suggested.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.245-251
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• 2016

Soil can be contaminated by radioactive materials due to nuclide leakage following unexpected situations during the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant. Soil decontamination is necessary if contaminated land is to be reused for housing or industry. The present study classifies various soil remediation technologies into biological, physics/chemical and thermal treatment and analyzes their principles and treatment materials. Among these methods, this study selects technologies and categorizes the economics, applicability and technical characteristics of each technology into three levels of high, medium and low by weighting the various factors. Based on this analysis, the most applicable soil decontamination technology was identified.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.297-304
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• 2018

U.S. nuclear power plant decommissioning guidelines(MARSSIM and MARLAP) are recommends to use DQOs when planning and conducting site surveys. The DQOs which is constructed in the site survey planning stage provide a way to make the best use of data. It helps we can get the important information and data to make decisions as well. From fifth to seventh steps of DQOs are the process of designing a site survey by using the collected data and information in the previous step to make reasonable and reliable decisions. The gray region that is set up during this process is defined as the range of concentrations where the consequences of type II decision errors are relatively small. The gray region can be set using DCGL and the average concentration of radionuclide in the sample collected at the survey unit. By setting up the gray region, site survey plan can be made most resource-efficient and the consequences on decision errors can be minimized. In this study, we set up the gray region by using the DCGL of Kori-1 which was derived from the previous research. In addition, we proposed a method to assess the concentration of radionuclide in samples for making decisions correctly.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.153-164
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• 2014

Currently, there are many programs which are now being developed or already developed to predict radionuclide and corrosion product at the stage of designing NPP. However, since there are not many developments in evaluating quantity of activation corrosion products occurring when disassembling a nuclear power plant there exist some difficulties in calculating accurately. In order to evaluate activation products inventory for the research of effect of neutron activation in the reactor vessel, component of nuclear reactor and adjacent structures, it should be evaluated by using operation history of nuclear reactor, material composition of structure and average neutron flux in every field representing fixed structure of nuclear reactor. In this study, CORA, PACTOLE, CRUDSIM, CREAT and ACE codes are analyzed to predict the quantity of radionuclide and corrosion product of primary reactor which is used at the stage of designing. As a future study, the accuracy in calculating the quantity of product corrosion can be increase by finding out the possibility of use and improvement for evaluation of the decontamination.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.66-70
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• 2017

Radioactive materials are used in medicine, non-destructive testing, and nuclear plants. Source localization is especially important during nuclear decommissioning and decontamination because the actual location of the radioactive source within nuclear waste is often unknown. The coded-aperture imaging technique started with space exploration and moved into X-ray and gamma ray imaging, which have imaging process characteristics similar to each other. In this study, we simulated $21{\times}21$ and $37{\times}37$ coded aperture collimators based on a modified uniformly redundant array (MURA) pattern to make a gamma imaging system that can localize a gamma-ray source. We designed a $21{\times}21$ coded aperture collimator that matches our gamma imaging detector and did feasibility experiments with the coded aperture imaging system. We evaluated the performance of each collimator, from 2 mm to 10 mm thicknesses (at 2 mm intervals) using root mean square error (RMSE) and sensitivity in a simulation. In experimental results, the full width half maximum (FWHM) of the point source was $5.09^{\circ}$ at the center and $4.82^{\circ}$ at the location of the source was $9^{\circ}$. We will continue to improve the decoding algorithm and optimize the collimator for high-energy gamma rays emitted from a nuclear power plant.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.221-227
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• 2019

During the operation, maintenance and decommissioning of nuclear power plant radioactive contaminated waste is produced. This waste is stored in an underground repository 60-100 meters below the surface. The metallic portion of this waste comprises mostly carbon and stainless steel. A long-term field exposure showed high corrosion rates, general corrosion up to 29 ㎛ a^-1 and localized corrosion even higher. High corrosion rate is possible if microbes produce corrosive products, or alter the local microenvironment to favor corrosion. The bacterial and archaeal composition of biofilm formed on the surface of carbon steel was studied using 16S rRNA gene targeting sequencing, followed by phylogenetic analyses of the microbial community. The functional potential of the microbial communities in biofilm was studied by functional gene targeting quantitative PCR. The corrosion rate was calculated from weight loss measurements and the deposits on the surfaces were analyzed with SEM/EDS and XRD. Our results demonstrate that microbial diversity on the surface of carbon steel and their functionality is vast. Our results suggest that in these nutrient poor conditions the role of methanogenic archaea in corrosive biofilm, in addition to sulphate reducing bacteria, could be greater than previously suspected.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.121-126
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• 2019

The radionuclide inventory prediction of a nuclear power plant can help establish decommissioning plan by providing information of radiation environment. Accumulated radionuclides in reactors and related facilities after reactor shutdown can be divided into neutron activated materials and contaminated materials. Among the neutron activated radionuclides, $^{36}Cl$ and $^{41}Ca$ are important from the viewpoint of disposal because of its long half-life and physiochemical characteristics. In this research, we calculated the radionuclides of $^{36}Cl$ and $^{41}Ca$ in bioshielding concrete by estimating the neutron flux and cross section using the MCNPX. And we evaluated the inventories of $^{36}Cl$ and $^{41}Ca$ using the activation calculation code ORIGEN2.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.228-233
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• 2013

It has been continuously generated the requirement for the replacement of the main components such as a steam generator due to the deterioration of the nuclear power plant all around the world. Also, a large amount of radioactive metal was generated during the decommissioning in a short period. It is required to make an accurate measurement of the residual radioactivity for recycling the metal waste for releasing from regulatory control. In planning the measurement procedures, the influence of geometry, self-absorption, density and other relevant factors on the representativeness of the measurements should be considered for the decommissioning metal waste. In this study, the method for measurement procedures, the source term evaluation, the ways to secure representative samples, the measurement device for wide area and the self-absorption correction factors for different density were evaluated. The metal samples for measurement were prepared for securing the simple geometry and representative by melting process. The developed correction method for measuring the radioactivity a variety density of metal waste could improve the reliability of the evaluation results for clearance.