• The Korean Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.104-110
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• 2011

Purpose: The object evaluation method about medical institutes of these days increases credibility of consumers about medical services by conducting a certification system about medical institutes. In addition, as nuclear medicine test rooms and diagnosis test medicine room adopt many kinds of international certification systems, the matters regarding safety management of test rooms are being regarded as important. Since the blood test rooms of nuclear medicine are exposed to many harmful factors such as infection from clinical specimen and radioactive isotope reagent, there is a need to pay lots of attention to the safety management of staff and patients. Therefore, this study discusses safety management activities of staff and patients, which are conducted in the blood test rooms of the nuclear medicine department in Asan Medical Center. Materials and Methods: In the blood test rooms of the nuclear medicine department in Asan Medical Center, the matters regarding comprehensive safety management by the person in charge of safety management are offered and all staff members of the test rooms apply them into work. Safety management education is regularly conducted according to established regulations, and infection is prevented through implementation of wearing personal protectors and hand sanitation during test work. In addition, technical safety guides and accident guides for interruption of electric power are provided against emergencies. Through infection management guides, infection prevention and preparation methods for infection are learned and radioactive isotope management, safety management about reagent use and safety guides about harmful chemical substances are being applied to work. Results: The blood test rooms of the nuclear medicine department apply safety management regulations to work. Under the situation where hand sanitation should be conducted, hands are washed to prevent infection between staff and patients, and for preventing infection from clinical specimen, personal protectors are worn. The reagent, which is classified as harmful substance, is separately stored to be easily recognized, radioactive wastes and general medical wastes are also safely managed. Through these lots of safety management activities, safety management awareness of staff members is enhanced, and patients are protected from many dangers. Conclusion: Staff members of the blood test rooms of the nuclear medicine department should be fully aware of safety management regulations and apply them to work. When better safety management suggestions are made, they need to be examined and applied for increasing quality of safety management for staff and patients.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2008

Since plutonium accounts for 40-50% of the power produced by uranium fuels, spent fuel contains only residual plutonium. Management of this plutonium is one of the aspects influencing the choice of a fuel cycle back-end option: reprocessing, direct disposal or wait-and-see. Different grades and qualities of plutonium exist depending from their specific generation conditions; all are valuable fissile material. Safeguard authorities watch the inventories of civil plutonium, but access to those data is restricted. Independent evaluations have led to an estimated current inventory of 220t plutonium in total (spent fuel, separated civil plutonium and military plutonium). If used as MOX fuel, it would be sufficient to feed all the PWRs and BWRs worldwide during 7 years or to deploy a FBR park corresponding to 150% of today' s installed nuclear capacity worldwide, which could then be exploited for centuries with the current stockpile of depleted and spent uranium. The energy potential of plutonium deteriorates with storage time of spent fuel and of separated plutonium, due to the decay of $^{241}Pu$, the best fissile isotope, into americium, a neutron absorber. The loss of fissile value of plutonium is more pronounced for usage in LWRs than in FBR. However, keeping the current plutonium inventory for an expected future deployment of FBRs is counterproductive. Recycling plutonium reduce the required volume for final disposal in an underground repository and the cost of final disposal. However, the benefits of utilizing an energy resource and of reducing final disposal liabilities are not the only aspects that determine the choice of a back-end policy.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.183-195
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• 2024

Additional functional upgrades to the large-area compton camera (LACC) measurement device that can provide characteristics evaluation information (nuclear species and radioactivity) and two-dimensional or three-dimensional distribution imaging information of radioactive materials existing in surface or internal of concrete structures are required in terms of work stability and efficiency in order to apply to actual decommissioning sites such as nuclear power plants or medical cyclotron facilities by using this measurement device. To this purpose, the technology that allows radiation workers to intuitively and visually check the distribution of radioactive materials in advance by matching the two-dimensional distribution imaging information of radioactive materials obtained through the LACC measurement device and visual imaging of the measurement zone (10 m × 5 m) was developed. In addition, the separate system that can automatically adjust the position (height) in units of the measurement area size (0.7 m × 0.3 m × 0.8 m) of the LACC measurement device was developed and the integrated management system for characteristics evaluation information and two-dimensional or three-dimensional distribution imaging information obtained per unit of measurement for radioactive materials was developed. These functional upgrades related to LACC measurement device can improve work efficiency and safety when measuring radioactivity of concrete structures and enable the establishment of appropriate decommissioning strategies using radioactivity measurement information for decommissioning nuclear power plants or medical cyclotron facilities.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 1993

This paper describes a prototype expert system to aid operation in rod consolidation process. The knowledgebase is composed of three database groups and 60 rules with production, and object oriented techniques that correlates database groups. The expert system is designed to track the transitions of nuclear materials through the operation areas of the rod consolidation process, to diagnose current status in any operating conditions, normal and off-normal, and to advise operators to properly recover off-normality. The expert system can give efficient management of nuclear material accountability and process operation in the rod consolidation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.1127-1134
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• 2009

Concrete has three major properties after a penetration-reinforcing agent is applied on its surface. First, the durability is improved by the sol-gel process of synthesized material from the polycondensation of TEOS (tetra-ethoxyorthosilicate) and acrylate monomer. Second, the capability to absorb impact energy is reinforced through the formation of a soft and flexible layer of organic monomers by Tea (Tetra Ethyl Amin). Third, the capability to prevent deterioration is enhanced by adding isobutyl-orthosilicate and alcohol. The performance and application of an agent developed through the synthesis of organic and inorganic material in an effort to prevent concrete from deterioration and improve the durability of concrete structures were verified in diverse experiments. The results of these experiments showed that the application of the proposed penetration-reinforcing agent has the effect of increasing the compressive strength by filling up the internal pores of concrete with physically and chemically stable compounds after penetrating the concrete. It also improves the durability against the deterioration factors such as salt water damage, carbonation, freezing and thawing, and compound deterioration. Therefore, it is confirmed that the penetration-reinforcing agent is a useful substance for the management and repair of concrete structures.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.7
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• pp.849-858
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• 2015

This study set the pyroprocess facility at an engineering scale as a cost object, and presented the cost consumed during the unit processes of the pyroprocess. For the cost calculation, the activity based costing (ABC) method was used instead of the engineering cost estimation method, which calculates the cost based on the conceptual design of the pyroprocess facility. The calculation results demonstrate that the pyroprocess facility's unit process cost is $194/kgHM for pretreatment, $298/kgHM for electrochemical reduction, $226/kgHM for electrorefining, and $299/kgHM for electrowinning. An analysis demonstrated that the share of each unit process cost among the total pyroprocess cost is as follows: 19% for pretreatment, 29% for electrochemical reduction, 22% for electrorefining, and 30% for electrowinning. The total unit cost of the pyroprocess was calculated at $1,017/kgHM. In the end, electrochemical reduction and the electrowinning process took up most of the cost, and the individual costs for these two processes was found to be similar. This is because significant raw material cost is required for the electrochemical reduction process, which uses platinum as an anode electrode. In addition, significant raw material costs are required, such as for $Li_3PO_4$, which is used a lot during the salt purification process.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.54-62
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• 1994

The hydraulic properties of domestic natural clay/crushed rock mixture suggested as a candidate backfill material for the low and intermediate level waste repository were investigated. The dry density-water content relationship was studied to define an optimum water content that gives a maximum attainable dry density at constant compaction pressure. The hydraulic conductivities of clay/crushed rock mixture as a function of clay content were also measured. As the clay content decreased, the maximum attainable dry density increased and the optimum water content became more distinct. However the attainable density is not significantly sensitive to water content. The hydraulic conductivities of the mixture increased from 5 $\times$ 10$^{-12}$ m/s to 7 $\times$ 10$^{-10}$ m/s with clay content decreasing from 100 wt.% to 25 wt.% at dry density of 1.2 Mg/㎥. In case of dry density of 1.5 Mg/㎥, they maintain the lower values of 5 $\times$ 10$^{-12}$ m/s even at 25 wt.% clay content. The concept of effective clay dry density was suggested to estimate the hydraulic conductivity of the mixture. It was shown that the effective clay dry density concept can explain welt the hydraulic conductivities of the mixtures with various dry density and crushed rock content.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.1553-1561
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• 2024

Nondestructive radiography using cosmic ray muons has been used for decades to monitor nuclear reactor and spent nuclear fuel storage. Because nuclear fuel assemblies are highly dense and large, typical radiation probes such as x-rays cannot penetrate these target imaging objects. Although cosmic ray muons are highly penetrative for nuclear fuels as a result of their relatively high energy, the wide application of muon tomography is limited because of naturally low cosmic ray muon flux. This work presents a new image reconstruction algorithm to maximize the utility of cosmic ray muon in tomography applications. Muon momentum information is used to improve imaging resolution, as well as muon scattering angle. In this work, a new convolution was introduced known as M-value, which is a mathematical integration of two measured quantities: scattering angle and momentum. It captures the objects' quantity and density in a way that is easy to use with image reconstruction algorithms. The results demonstrate how to reconstruct images when muon momentum measurements are included in a typical muon scattering tomography algorithm. Using M-value improves muon tomography image resolution by replacing the scattering angle value without increasing computation costs. This new algorithm is projected to be a standard nondestructive radiography technique for spent nuclear fuel and nuclear material management.

• Korean Security Journal
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• no.37
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• pp.325-354
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• 2013

The concept of national security and the fundamental system for crisis management have departed from traditional methods and the importance of a national critical infrastructure crisis management has been emphasized. A national critical infrastructure crisis means a situation where human resource, material and functional system that may have a material effect on the critical functions of the government, the vitality and integrity of society, national economy and the safety of the public becomes disabled due to causes such as terrorism or major disasters. Although North Korea had been subject to numerous rounds of negotiations and sanctions as it continually developed nuclear weapons since the 1960s, it has also showed off its nuclear armaments through successful nuclear testings and missile launches. As the development and threat of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction becomes more noticeable and the range of its risk expands, this study focuses on the potential for an absence of leadership for national crisis management where the country's leadership, which should serve the critical role and function of handling national crises, becomes completely destroyed by the unexpected initial attacks by North Korea. As a result, the purpose of this study is to propose safety measures for the country's leadership in preparation for North Korea's threat of nuclear weapons by examining the concept and degree of risk of weapons of mass destruction with a focus on nuclear weapons, analyzing the substance of the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons and evaluating such threat. In conclusion, first, to ensure the normal functioning of a national crisis management system in the event of a national crisis, we must seek safety measures that conform to the scope and succession order of the leadership of the national crisis management for an Enduring Constitutional Government (ECG) and the Continuity Of Operations (COOP). Second, in the event of a national ceremony, the gathering of the country's leadership all together in an open place should be avoided. In unavoidable circumstances, the next in rank that will act on behalf of the current leader should be designated and relevant safety measures should be taken. Third, during time of peace, in preparation for national crises, the scope of protection for the country's leadership should be prescribed and specific security and safety measures should be implemented. Fourth, the succession order for acting president in the case of the death of the president pursuant to Articles 71 and 26(1) of the National Government Organization Act should reconsidered to see whether it is a reasonable provision that takes into consideration a national crisis management that corresponds to the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. Pursuant to the Basic Guidelines for National Crisis Management set out under Presidential Directive No. 229, the Korean government is currently operating a case-by-case "crisis management standard manual" and its sub-manuals and has also prepared the Presidential Security Service's security and safety measure regulations regarding the acting president. Therefore, the Korean government should actualize the above points in the case-by-case crisis management standard manual and security and safety measure regulations regarding the acting president to implement and legislate them.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.117-128
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• 2024

The 300 concrete silo systems installed and operated at the site of Wolsong nuclear power plant (NPP) have been storing CANDU spent nuclear fuel (SNF) under dry conditions since 1992. The dry storage system must be operated safely until SNF is delivered to an interim storage facility or final repository located outside the NPP in accordance with the SNF management policy of the country. The silo dry storage system consists of a concrete structure, liner steel plate in the inner cavity, and fuel basket. Because the components of the silo system are exposed to high energy radiation owing to the high radioactivity of SNF inside, the effects of irradiation during long-term storage must be analyzed. To this end, material specimens of each component were manufactured and subjected to irradiation and strength tests, and mechanical characteristics before and after irradiation were examined. Notably, the mechanical characteristics of the main components of the silo system were affected by irradiation during the storage of spent fuel. The test results will be used to evaluate the long-term behavior of silo systems in the future.