• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.9-27
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• 2013

Nagra was established in 1972 by the Swiss nuclear power plant operators and the Federal Government to implement permanent and safe disposal of all types of radioactive waste generated in Switzerland. The Swiss Nuclear Energy Act specifies that these shall be disposed of in deep geological repositories. A number of different geological formations and sites have been investigated to date and an extended database of geological characteristics as well as data and state-of-the-art methodologies required for the evaluation of the long-term safety of repository systems have been developed. The research, development, and demonstration activities are further supported by the two underground research facilities operating in Switzerland, the Grimsel Test Site and the Mont Terri Project, along with very active collaboration of Nagra with national and international partners. A new site selection process was approved by the Federal Government in 2008 and is ongoing. This process is driven by the long-term safety and feasibility of the geological repositories and is based on a step-wise decision-making approach with a strong participatory component from the affected communities and regions. In this paper a brief history and the current status of the Swiss radioactive waste management program are presented and special characteristics that may be useful beyond the Swiss program are highlighted and discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.5
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• pp.1010-1018
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• 2017

The European Treatment and Disposal of Irradiated Graphite and other Carbonaceous Waste project sought to develop best practices in the retrieval, treatment, and disposal of irradiated graphite including other irradiated carbonaceous waste such as structural material made of graphite, nongraphitized carbon bricks, and fuel coatings. Emphasis was given on legacy irradiated graphite, as this represents a significant inventory in respective national waste management programs. This paper provides an overview of the characteristics of graphite irradiated during its use, primarily as a moderator material, within nuclear reactors. It describes the potential techniques applicable to the retrieval, treatment, recycling/reuse, and disposal of these graphite wastes. Considering the lifecycle of nuclear graphite, from manufacture to final disposal, a number of waste management options have been developed. These options consider the techniques and technologies required to address each stage of the lifecycle, such as segregation, treatment, recycle, and ultimate disposal in a radioactive waste repository, providing a toolbox to aid operators and regulators to determine the most appropriate management strategy. It is noted that national waste management programs currently have, or are in the process of developing, respective approaches to irradiated graphite management. The output of the Treatment and Disposal of Irradiated Graphite and other Carbonaceous Waste project is intended to aid these considerations, rather than dictate them.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.65-93
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• 2023

Several countries have been operating radioactive waste disposal (RWD) programs to construct their own repositories and have used natural analogues (NA) studies directly or indirectly to ensure the reliability of the long-term safety of deep geological disposal (DGD) systems. A DGD system in Korea has been under development, and for this purpose a generic NA study is necessary. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has just launched the first national NA R&D program in Korea to identify the role of NA studies and to support the safety case in the RWD program. In this article, we review some cases of NA studies carried out in advanced countries considering crystalline rocks as candidate host rocks for high-level radioactive waste disposal. We examine the differences among these case studies and their roles in reflecting each country's disposal repository design. The legal basis and roadmap for NA studies in each country are also described. However because the results of this analysis depend upon different environmental conditions, they can be only used as important data for establishing various research strategies to strengthen the NA study environment for domestic disposal system research in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Resources Recycling Conference
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• 2001.05b
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• pp.95-99
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• 2001

• Korean System Dynamics Review
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.119-146
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• 2006

City of Gyeongju's referendum finally offered the long-waited low-level radioactive waste disposal site in November 2005. Gyeongju's positive decision was due to the various economic rewards and incentives the national government promised to the city. 300 million won for an accepting bonus, 8.5 billion won, annual revenue fro the entry quantity of waste into the city's disposal site, the location of the headquarter building of the Korean Hydro and Nuclear Power Co., and the accelerator research center. All of the above will affect the city's infrastructure and the citizens' economic and cultural lives. Population, land use, economic structure, environment and quality of life will be affected. Some will be very positive, and some will be positive. This research project will see the future of the city and forecast the demographic, economic, physical and environmental changes of the city via computer simulation's system dynamics technique. This kind of simulation will help City of Gyeongju's what to prepare for the future. The population forecasting of the year 2026 will be 289,069 with the waste disposal site, and 279,131 without the waste disposal site in Gyeongju. The waste disposal site and the relocation of the company headquarters and location of the accelerator research center will attract 9,938 individuals more with 511 manufacturing shops and 1944 service jobs. The population increase will bring 3,550 more houses constructed in the city. Land use will also be affected. More land will be developed. However, mad, water plant and waste water plant will not be expanded as much. The city's financial structure will be expanded, due to the increased revenues from the waste disposal site, and property tax revenues from the middle-class employees of the company, and the high-powered scientists and technologists from the accelerator research center. All in an, the future of the city will be brighter after operating the nuclear waste disposal site inside the city.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.36 no.12
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• pp.191-200
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• 1998

The purpose of this study were to examine the disposal consciousness of foods waste and meal management behavior related to environmental conservation, and to find out the ways to improve the disposal of foods waste. Data were collected from questionaire with 786 housewives who live in Chonbuk area. About 45% of foods waste consisted of vegetables and fruits. The levels of cooking(use) and idsposal behavior among meal management behavior were relatively high, but food preparation(buy) score was low. These results suggested that menu planning before food preparation, and buying some cleaned and trimmed foods in the market should be recommennded to reduce the foods waste. The levels of meal management behavior did not show any significant associaations with disposal consciousness of foods waste but were positively correlated to environmental conciousness. It could be thought that the effort of government administration to reduce and reuse of foods waste is needed to improve the desirable disposal behavior of that, and the well programmed enviornmental education should be more required and practical than increase the environmental conciousness.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2013

Two different kinds of nuclear power plants produce a substantial amount of spent fuel annually in Korea. According to the current projection, it is expected that around 60,000 MtU of spent fuel will be produced from 36 PWR and APR reactors and 4 CANDU reactors by the end of 2089. In 2006, KAERI proposed a conceptual design of a geological disposal system (called KRS, Korean Reference disposal System for spent fuel) for PWR and CANDU spent fuel, as a product of a 4-year research project from 2003 to 2006. The major result of the research was that it was feasible to construct a direct disposal system for 20,000 MtU of PWR spent fuels and 16,000 MtU of CANDU spent fuel in the Korean peninsula. Recently, KAERI and MEST launched a project to develop an advanced fuel cycle based on the pyroprocessing of PWR spent fuel to reduce the amount of HLW and reuse the valuable fissile material in PWR spent fuel. Thus, KAERI has developed a geological disposal system for high-level waste from the pyroprocessing of PWR spent fuel since 2007. However, since no decision was made for the CANDU spent fuel, KAERI improved the disposal density of KRS by introducing several improved concepts for the disposal canister. In this paper, the geological disposal systems developed so far are briefly outlined. The amount and characteristics of spent fuel and HLW, 4 kinds of disposal canisters, the characteristics of a buffer with domestic Ca-bentonite, and the results of a thermal design of deposition holes and disposal tunnels are described. The different disposal systems are compared in terms of their disposal density.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.115-122
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• 2011

This research considers a system containing a manufacturing firm who generates waste material during manufacturing process, and a disposal firm who collects and disposes the waste material. Identification of the optimal number of pick ups and the amount of waste to be disposed at certain period of time in terms of cost minimization is studied. Two types of waste accumulation rates, constant and linearly increasing, are discussed and mathematical models are developed. It can be shown that the results for these two different types of waste accumulation differ in a wide range because of the difference in the way of how waste is accumulated, which disturbs the storage cost. An integrated model is also developed and discussed in which both the manufacturing firm and the disposal firm benefit from the coordination between the two parties. It is shown that the optimal policy adopted by the integrated approach can provide a strong and consistent cost-minimizing effect for both the manufacturing firm and the disposal firm over the existing approach. Finally, all the models are verified by a numerical example and the results are compared.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.261-262
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.791-800
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• 2010

This paper presents the construction status and the conceptual designs of midium and high level radioactive waste disposal facilities from all around world. For the midium radioactive waste, a shallow disposal using trench or a deep depth disposal are adopted. However, these are rather focusing on the social and cultural point of view than the technical. Meanwhile, the high level radioactive waste is basically disposed in the deep underground. The corresponding ground conditions are usually dense and composed of sedimentary and crystalline rocks mainly with low permeability. A barrier system is made of canister which consists of copper, titanium, and tin. The inner and outer side of the canister are composed of different materials respectively.