• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.64-69
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to expand the use of coal ash and coal slag in thermal power plants. In addition, controlled low strength materials was developed to prevent mine settlement. Bottom ash and KR slag are mixed at ratio of 7:3 to expand the use of industrial by-products through carbonate reaction and inhibit the exudation of heavy metals. In order to efficiently fill the abandon mine, workability and physical properties were evaluated according to flow. As a result of elution of harmful substance experiment, it was confirmed that the carbonation reaction inhibited the elution of heavy metals. It was confirmed that the difference in water ratio was the difference in specific surface area of the controlled low strength materials. It was confirmed that the working efficiency is excellent when the flowability is 300mm compared to 260mm. compressive strength measurement result was relatively high at 260mm compared to 300mm because the number of pores due to decrease of water ratio was small.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.245-261
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• 2019

Radioactive contaminant from a nuclear facility moves to the ecosystem by run-off or groundwater flow. Among the two mechanisms, contaminant plume through a river can be easily detected through a surface water monitoring system, but radioactive contaminant transport in groundwater is difficult to monitor because of lack of information on flow path. To understand the contaminant flow in groundwater, understanding of the geo-environment is needed. We suggest a method to decide on monitoring location and points around an imaginary nuclear facility by using the results of site characterization in the study area. To decide the location of a monitoring well, groundwater flow modeling around the study area was conducted. The results show that, taking account of groundwater flow direction, the monitoring well should be located at the downstream area. Also, monitoring sections in the monitoring well were selected, points at which groundwater moves fast through the flow path. The method suggested in the study will be widely used to detect potential groundwater contamination in the field of oil storage caverns, pollution by agricultural use, as well as nuclear use facilities including nuclear power plants.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2019

High-level radioactive waste (HLW) such as spent fuel is inevitably produced when nuclear power plants are operated. A geological repository has been considered as one of the most adequate options for the disposal of HLW, and it will be constructed in host rock at a depth of 500~1,000 meters below ground level with the concept of an engineered barrier system (EBS) and a natural barrier system. The compacted bentonite buffer is one of the most important components of the EBS. As the compacted bentonite buffer is located between disposal canisters with spent fuel and the host rock, it can restrain the release of radionuclides and protect canisters from the inflow of groundwater. Because of inflow of groundwater into the compacted bentonite buffer, it is essential to investigate soil-water characteristic curves (SWCC) of the compacted bentonite buffer in order to evaluate the entire safety performance of the EBS. Therefore, this paper conducted laboratory experiments to analyze the SWCC for a Korean Ca-type compacted bentonite buffer considering dry density, confined or unconfined condition, and drying or wetting path. There was no significant difference of SWCC considering dry density under unconfined condition. Furthermore, it was found that there was higher water suction in unconfined condition that in confined condition, and higher water suction during drying path than during wetting path.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.105-116
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• 2021

Background: The creation of the National Institute of Ecology began as a national alternative project to preserve mudflats instead of constructing the industrial complexes by reclamation, and achieve regional development. On the other hand, at the national level, the research institute for ecology was needed to cope with the worsening conditions for maintaining biodiversity due to accelerated climate change such as global warming and increased demand for development. In order to meet these needs, the National Institute of Ecology has the following objectives: (1) carries out studies for ecosystem change due to climate change and biodiversity conservation, (2) performs ecological education to the public through exhibition of various ecosystem models, and (3) promotes regional development through the ecological industry. Furthermore, to achieve these objectives, the National Institute of Ecology thoroughly followed the basic principles of ecology, especially restoration ecology, in the process of its construction. We introduce the principles and cases of ecological restoration applied in the process. Results: We minimized the impact on the ecosystem in order to harmonize with the surrounding environment in all the processes of construction. We pursued passive restoration following the principle of ecological restoration as a process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem degraded for all the space except in land where artificial facilities were introduced. Reference information was applied thoroughly in the process of active restoration to create biome around the world, Korean peninsula forests, and wetland ecosystems. In order to realize true restoration, we pursued the ecological restoration in a landscape level as the follows. We moved the local road 6 and high-voltage power lines to underground to ensure ecological connectivity within the National Institute of Ecology campus. To enhance ecological diversity, we introduced perch poles and islands as well as floating leaved, emerged, wetland, and riparian plants in wetlands and mantle communities around the forests of the Korean Peninsula in the terrestrial ecosystem. Furthermore, in order to make the public aware of the importance of the intact nature, the low-lying landscape elements, which have disappeared due to excessive land use in most areas of Korea, was created by imitating demilitarized zone (DMZ) landscape that has these landscape elements. Conclusions: The National Institute of Ecology was created in an eco-friendly way by thoroughly reflecting the principles of ecology to suit its status and thus the impact on the existing ecosystem was minimized. This concept was also designed to be reflected in the process of operation. The results have become real, and a result of analysis on carbon budget analysis is approaching the carbon neutrality.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.19-26
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• 2021

The high-level radioactive waste (HLW) produced from nuclear power plants is disposed in a rock-mass at a depth of hundreds meters below the ground level. Since HLW is very dangerous to human being, it must be disposed of safely by the engineered barrier system (EBS). The EBS consists of a disposal canister, backfill material, buffer material, and so on. When the components of EBS are installed, gaps inevitably exist not only between the rock-mass and buffer material but also between the canister and buffer material. The gap can reduce water-retarding capacity and heat release efficiency of the buffer material, so it is necessary to investigate properties of gap-filling materials and to analyze gap spacing effect. Furthermore, there has been few researches considering domestic disposal system compared to overseas researches. In this reason, this research derived the peak temperature of the bentonite buffer material considering domestic disposal system based on the numerical analysis. The gap between the canister and buffer material had a minor effect on the peak temperature of the bentonite buffer material, but there was 40% difference of the peak temperature of the bentonite buffer material because of the gap existence between the buffer material and rock mass.

• Journal of Platform Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.52-62
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• 2021

Quality control is critical at manufacturing sites and is key to predicting the risk of quality defect before manufacturing. However, the reliability of manual quality control methods is affected by human and physical limitations because manufacturing processes vary across industries. These limitations become particularly obvious in domain areas with numerous manufacturing processes, such as the manufacture of major nuclear equipment. This study proposed a novel method for predicting the risk of quality defects by using natural language processing and machine learning. In this study, production data collected over 6 years at a factory that manufactures main equipment that is installed in nuclear power plants were used. In the preprocessing stage of text data, a mapping method was applied to the word dictionary so that domain knowledge could be appropriately reflected, and a hybrid algorithm, which combined n-gram, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency, and Singular Value Decomposition, was constructed for sentence vectorization. Next, in the experiment to classify the risky processes resulting in poor quality, k-fold cross-validation was applied to categorize cases from Unigram to cumulative Trigram. Furthermore, for achieving objective experimental results, Naive Bayes and Support Vector Machine were used as classification algorithms and the maximum accuracy and F1-score of 0.7685 and 0.8641, respectively, were achieved. Thus, the proposed method is effective. The performance of the proposed method were compared and with votes of field engineers, and the results revealed that the proposed method outperformed field engineers. Thus, the method can be implemented for quality control at manufacturing sites.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.77-85
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• 2021

Hydroponic cultivation, in which crops are grown without soil and are unaffected by the weather, has many advantages over conventional soil cultivation. The crop's growth can be further accelerated by using nutrient solution in place of water. This study investigated the growth and physicochemical properties of hydroponic barley sprouts under various nutrient solution and artificial light treatments. The shoot, root, and total plant length increased over time, with the fastest growth occurring in the nutrient solution and light-emitting diode (LED) treatments. Fresh and dry plant weights were higher in the fluorescent lamp treatment than in the LED treatment. Barley sprout powder color differed slightly by treatment, with the Hunters L value ranging from 50.79 to 53.77; Hunters a value from -6.70 to -4.42; and Hunters b value from 13.35 to 14.76. The Hunters L and Hunters b values were highest in the LED treatment, whereas the Hunters a value was relatively highest in the fluorescent lamp treatment. The total phenol content was higher in the control than in the nutrient solution treatment; however, the total flavonoid content showed the opposite pattern to that of total phenol content, being highest in plants that were grown in nutrient solution. The Trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) was higher in the control group than in the nutrient solution group. The ferric ion reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) was higher in the fluorescent treatment group than in the LED treatment group. The total amino acid composition ranged from 106.82 to 122.63 mg/g dry powder, with the essential amino acid composition ranging from 47.01 to 56.19 mg/g, and non-essential amino acid composition from 67.86 to 77.66 mg/g. The most frequently detected compositional amino acid was aspartic acid, followed by glutamic acid, alanine, leucine, and valine.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.138-146
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• 2021

Objectives: This study aims to compare and evaluate the reduction efficiency of disinfectants used in the domestic meat processing industry to reduce bioaerosol exposure of meat industry workers and to use this as basic data for establishing work environment management measures. Methods: Thirteen disinfectants sold in South Korea were selected for evaluation and the bacterial reduction effect of the disinfectants was investigated. Bacterial suspension and surface disinfection tests were conducted to compare and analyze the antibacterial strength of the disinfectants. Pork carcasses, cutting boards, benches, and conveyor belts were selected for surface sterilization tests. Results: As a result of the bacterial suspension experiment test, all disinfectants had a bacterial reduction efficiency of more than 86%. Among them, the bacterial reduction efficiency of chlorine disinfectants was 99.93% on average. In the results of the pork carcass surface sterilization test, the rate of reduction of disinfectants made of quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) was the highest. Tests of plastic cutting boards showed that chlorine disinfectants had the best sterilization effect. Experiments on stainless steel benches showed the best bacterial reduction efficiency for chlorine dioxide and QACs disinfectants. In the conveyor belt made of urethane, QACs disinfectants showed excellent sterilization effects. Conclusions: The study evaluated the disinfection power of disinfectants against bacteria occurring in domestic meat processing plants. All disinfectants were found to be effective in bacterial suspension experiments, and chlorine disinfectants were particularly effective. In surface sterilization experiments, sterilizing agents with QACs as the main ingredient were excellent.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.553-560
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• 2020

This paper presents an algorithm for identifying and eliminating errors by seagrasses in coastal bathymetry surveying using drone and HD camera. Survey errors due to seagrasses were identified, segmentated and eliminated using a L∗a∗b color space model. Bathymetry survey using a drone and HD camera has many advantages over conventional survey methods such as ship-board acoustic sounder or manual level survey which are time consuming and expensive. However, errors caused by sea bed reflectance due to seagrasses habitat hamper the development of new surveying tool. Seagrasses are the flowering plants which start to grow in November and flourish to maximum density until April in Korea. We developed a new algorithm for identifying seagrasses habitat locations and eliminating errors due to seagrasses to get the accurate depth survey data. We tested our algorithm at Wolpo beach. Bathymetry survey data which were obtained using a drone with HD camera and calibrated to eliminate errors due to seagrasses, were compared with depth survey data obtained using ship-board multi-beam acoustic sounder. The abnormal bathymetry data which are defined as the excess of 1.5 times of a standard deviation of random errors, are composed of 8.6% of the test site of area of 200 m by 300 m. By applying the developed algorithm, 92% of abnnormal bathymetry data were successfully eliminated and 33% of RMS errors were reduced.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.125-132
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• 2020

Enrichment possibilities for recovering rare earth elements contained in coal bottom ash generated from domestic circulating fluidized bed combustion (CFBC) were identified. The transport characteristics of the REEs according to the separation and removal of major minerals were evaluated using sieving and leaching process. The main minerals of bottom ash were identified as anhydrite, magnetite, and quartz, and this was confirmed as a 30% of REE content of the world's average coal ash REE value (404 ppm) as a result of the difference in the combustion characteristics of power plants (REE contents in starting material: 123 ppm). More than 90% of the REEs contained in the bottom ash were found to move mainly with magnetite, and less than 10% of the components were found to move with the quartz. Therefore, In order to recover rare earth elements from coal bottom ashes generated from CFBC boiler, it is necessary to select the main rare elements such as magnetite and develop a pretreatment and concentration process.