• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.351-357
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• 2007

The Japanese Government selected Mutsu, Aomori Prefecture as a provisional spent-fuel repository site. This comes as a result of the prefecture's five-year campaign to host the site since 2000. Korea stores spent nuclear fuel within sites of nuclear power plants, and expects the storage capacity to reach its limit by the year 2016. This compels Korea to learn the cases of Japan. Having successfully hosted Gyeongju as a site for low-to-intermediate-level nuclear waste repository, Korea has already learned the potential process of hosting spent fuel storage site. The striking difference between the two countries in the process of hosting the site is that the Korean government had to offer the local city a large amount of subsidy for hosting through competitive citizens' referendum among candidate cities while it was the leadership of the local municipality that enabled the controversial decision in Japan. It is also a distinguishable characteristics of Japan that not a huge subsidy is provided to the local host city. I hope this study offers an idea to Korea's future effort to select a spent-fuel host site.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.237-248
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• 2010

The safety of metal cask and concrete cask storage technology has been verified by CRIEPI through several research programs on demonstrative testing for the interim storage of spent fuel. The results have been reflected in the safety requirements for dry casks issued by NISA/METI (Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) of the Japanese government. On top of that, spent fuel integrity has been studied by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization (JNES). This paper reviews these research programs. Future issues include the long-term integrity of cask components and high burn-up spent fuel.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.380-380
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• 1998

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.115-124
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• 2013

Among the several options to solve PWR spent fuel accumulation problem in Korea, the dry storage method could be the most realistic and applicable solution in the near future. As the basic objectives of dry storage are to prevent a gross rupture of spent fuel during operation and to keep its retrievability until transportation, at the same time the importance of a spent fuel integrity evaluation that can estimate its condition at the final stage of dry storage is very high. According to the national need and technology progress, two representative nations of spent fuel dry storage, the USA and Japan, have established different system temperature criteria, which is the only controllable factor in a dry storage system. However, there are no technical criteria for this evaluation in Korea yet, it is necessary to review the previously well-organized methodologies of advanced countries and to set up our own domestic evaluation direction due to the nation's need for dry storage. To satisfy this necessity, building a domestic spent fuel test database should be the first step. Based on those data, it is highly recommended to compare domestic data range with foreign results, to build our own criteria, and to expand on evaluation work into recently issued integrity problems by using a comprehensive integrity evaluation code.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.7
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• pp.2339-2358
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• 2022

The review discusses various alternative approaches for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) reprocessing in aqueous carbonate media. The main stages, schemes, and methods of the most well-known and well-described processes for reprocessing SNF and some high-level radioactive waste using carbonate systems developed by research groups in Japan, the United States of America, the Republic of Korea, and the Russian Federation described and compared. The main advantages of such methods are outlined compared to the SNF reprocessing in nitric acid media. The levels of development and proximity of the designed processes to the industrial implementation are shown. The main principle achievements, prospects, and routes for the refinement of such methods for the technology of SNF reprocessing and handling of high-level radioactive waste formulated.

• JOURNAL OF ELECTRICAL WORLD
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• s.415
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• pp.62-66
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• 2011

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.333-349
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• 2013

As the capacity of spent nuclear fuel storage pool at reactor sites becomes saturated in ten years, long term dry storage strategy has been recently discussed as an alternative option in Korea. In this study, we reviewed safety-criteria-related research results on spent nuclear fuel performance and integrity under long-term dry storage and proposed the direction and the scope of future domestic research and development. Creep and hydride effect in relation to the embrittlement are known to be the major degradation mechanisms of the spent fuels during the long term dry storage. However, recent research results showed that hydride reorientation and hydride embrittlement are one of the most critical factors to the spent fuel integrity. Accordingly safety criteria of US and Japan for the storage system are basically founded on those mechanisms. However, in Korea, not only in-pile but out-of-pile experimental data have not been generated to understand fuel cladding degradation and to determine the criteria to ensure the safety. In addition, the transient behavior of the spent fuel during transportation also needs to be thoroughly examined. Therefore, various experimental research and development will be required to establish our own safety criteria for future long-term dry storage of domestic spent fuels.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.383-395
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• 2023

Since 1997, the Republic of Korea (ROK) has been developing pyro-processing (Pyro) technology to reduce the disposal burden of high-level radioactive waste by recycling spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Compared to plutonium and uranium extraction process, Korean Pyro technology has relatively excellent proliferation resistance that cannot separate pure plutonium owing to its intrinsic characteristics. Regarding Pyro technology development of ROK, the Bush administration considered that Pyro is not reprocessing under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, whereas the Obama administration considered that Pyro is subject to reprocessing. However, the Bush and Obama administrations did not allow ROK to conduct full Pyro activities using SNF, even though ROK had faithfully complied with international nonproliferation obligations. This is because the US nuclear nonproliferation policy to prevent the spread of sensitive technologies, such as enrichment and reprocessing, has a strong effect on ROK, unlike Japan, on a bilateral level beyond the NPT regime for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.459-470
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• 2012

From the PSA point of view, the Fukushima accident of Japan in 2011 reveals some issues to be re-considered and/or improved in the PSA such as the limited scope of the PSA, site risk, etc. KAERI (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute) has performed researches on the development of an integrated risk assessment framework related to some issues arisen after the Fukushima accident. This framework can cover the internal PSA model and external PSA models (fire, flooding, and seismic PSA models) in the full power and the low power-shutdown modes. This framework also integrates level 1, 2 and 3 PSA to quantify the risk of nuclear facilities more efficiently and consistently. We expect that this framework will be helpful to resolve the issue regarding the limited scope of PSA and to reduce some inconsistencies that might exist between (1) the internal and external PSA, and (2) full power mode PSA and low power-shutdown PSA models. In addition, KAERI is starting researches related to the extreme external events, the risk assessment of spent fuel pool, and the site risk. These emerging issues will be incorporated into the integrated risk assessment framework. In this paper the integrated risk assessment framework and the research activities on the emerging issues are outlined.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.313-327
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• 1996

As an at-reactor(AR) storage method o( spent fuel, there are horizontal concrete module type, metal storage cask type, concrete storage cask type, dual purpose (transportation and storage) cask type and multi-purpose (transportation, storage and disposal) cask type. All other types except multi-purpose one have been already used for AR dry storage of spent fuels after obtaining operation license in various foreign countries. Also the development of multi-purpose type has been continued for operation license. In America, Japan, Germany, Canada, Spain, Switzerland, and Czech Republic, etc., AR dry storage facilities are under operation or on propulsion, and spent fuels are transported to interim storage facility or reprocessing plant after dry storage at reactor temporarily. At Wolsung site, in case of Korea, concrete silo type has already been introduced, and it is believed to be inevitable to store spent fuels at reactor temporarily, considering the reality that storage capacity of spent fuel is approaching to the limit in some nuclear power plants. In this report, the system characteristics, design requirements, technical standards and status of AR storage system, which is suitable for domestic site such as Kori, have been studied. In most cases, the licensed period of storage cask is limited up to 20 years and the integrity of material and maintenance of leaktightness are required during the whole service life.