• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.111-120
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• 2002

A reference scenario of vault safety case prepared by the IAEA for the near-surface disposal facility of low-and informed]ate-level radioactive wastes is assessed with the MASCOT program. The appropriate conceptual models for the MASCOT implementation is developed. An assessment of groundwater pathway through a drinking well as a geosphere-biosphere interface is performed first. then biosphere pathway is analysed to estimate the radiological consequences of the disposed radionuclides based on compartment modeling approach. The validity of conceptual modeling for the reference scenario is investigated where possible comparing to the results generated by the other assessment. The result of this study shows that the typical conceptual model for groundwater pathway represented by the compartment model ran be satisfactorily used for safety assessment of the entire disposal system in a cons]stent way. It is also shown that safety assessment of a disposal facility considering complex and various pathways would be possible by the MASCOT program.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.119-128
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• 2008

Thermal assessment of a new CANDU spent fuel disposal system, which improves the retrievability of the spent fuel and enhances the densification factor compared with the Korean Reference disposal System, is carried out in this study. The canisters for CANDU spent fuels are stored for long term and cooled by natural convection in the proposed disposal system for the retrievability. The steady state thermal analyses for proposed CANDU disposal system are carried out with the ANSYS 10.0 CFX code. The thermal analyses are performed through two steps. At the first step, the sensitivity of the disposal tunnel spacing is analysed. The differences of maximum temperatures by several tunnel spacings are calculated at three points in the disposal tunnel. The result shows that the differences of the temperature at the three points are almost negligible because 99% of the decay heat is removed by natural convection. At the second procedure, 60m tunnel spacing with a ventilation system instead of natural convection is considered. The result is applied to the calculation of the canister surface temperature in disposal tunnel as boundary conditions. Consequently, the average and the maximum surface temperature of disposal canisters are $79.9^{\circ}C$ and $119^{\circ}C$, respectively. The inner maximum temperature of a basket in the disposal canister is calculated as $140.9^{\circ}C$. The maximum temperature of the basket meets the thermal requirement for the CANDU spent fuel cladding.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.37-46
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• 2010

The development of advanced nuclear fuel cycle(ANFC) technology is essential to meet the national mission for energy independence via a nuclear option in Korea. The action target is to develop environmentally friendly, cost-effective measures to reduce the burden of long term disposal. The proper scenarios regarding potential radionuclide release from a repository have been developed in this study based on the advanced korean Reference Disposal System(A-KRS). To predict safety for the various scenarios, a new assessment code based on the GoldSim software has also been developed. Deterministic analysis indicates an environmental benefit from the ANFC as long as the solid waster from the ANFC act as a proper barrier.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.229-236
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• 2009

There are two types of spent fuels generated from nuclear power plants, CANDU type and PWR type. PWR spent fuels which include a lot of reusable material can be considered to be recycled. CANDU spent fuels are considered to directly disposed in deep geological formation, since they have little reusable material. In this study, based on the Korean Reference spent fuel disposal System(KRS) which is to dispose both PWR and CANDU spent fuels, the more effective CANDU spent fuel disposal systems have been developed. To do this, the disposal canister has been modified to hold the storage basket which can load 60 spent fuel bundles. From these modified disposal canisters, the disposal systems to meet the thermal requirement for which the temperature of the buffer materials should not be over $100^{\circ}C$ have been proposed. These new disposals have made it possible to introduce the concept of long tenn storage and retrievabililty and that of the two-layered disposal canister emplacement in one disposal hole. These disposal concepts have been compared and analyzed with the KRS CANDU spent fuel disposal system in terms of disposal effectiveness. New CANDU spent fuel disposal concepts obtained in this study seem to improve thermal effectiveness, U-density, disposal area, excavation volume, and closure material volume up to 30 - 40 %.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2015

In the safety assessment of the geological disposal system of the radioactive wastes, the abnormal scenarios, in which the system is impacted by the abnormal events, need to be considered in addition to the reference scenario. In this study, characterization and prediction of well intrusion as one of the abnormal events which will impact the disposal system were conducted probabilistically and statistically for the safety assessment. The domestic well development data were analyzed, and the prediction methodologies of the well intrusion were suggested with a computation example. From the results, the annual well development rate per unit area in Korea was about 0.8 well/yr/km² in the conservative point of view. Considering the area of the overall disposal system which is about 1.5 km², the annual well development rate within the disposal system could be 1.2 well/yr. That is, it could be expected that more than one well would be installed within the disposal system every year after the institutional management period. From the statistical analysis, the probabilistic distribution of the well depth followed the log-normal distribution with 3.0363 m of mean value and 1.1467 m of standard deviation. This study will be followed by the study about the impacts of the well intrusion on the geological disposal system, and the both studies will contribute to the increased reliability of safety assessment.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.387-398
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• 2003

For reference human intrusion scenarios constructed in previous study, a probabilistic safety assessment to derive the radionuclide concentration limits for the low- and intermediate- level radioactive waste disposal facility is conducted. Statistical approach by the Latin Hypercube Sampling method is introduced and new assumptions about the disposal facility system are examined and discussed. In our previous study of deterministic approach, the post construction scenarios appeared as most limiting scenario to derive the radionuclide concentration limits. Whereas, in this statistical approach, the post drilling and the post construction scenarios are mutually competing for the scenario selection according to which radionuclides are more important in safety assessment context. Introduction of new assumption shows that the post drilling scenario can play an important role as the limiting scenario instead of the post-construction scenario. When we compare the concentration limits between the previous and this study, concentrations of radionuclides such as Nb-94, Cs-137 and alpha-emitting radionuclides show elevated values than the case of the previous study. Remaining radionuclides such as Sr-90, Tc-99 I-129, Ni-59 and Ni-63 show lower values than the case of the previous study.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1998.05b
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• pp.458-463
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• 1998

고준위방사성페기물의 기준 처분시스템 (Reference Geological Disposal System)의 개념설정을 위하여 현재 국내 원전에서 발생되고 있거나 향후 2010까지 건설될 원전으로부터 발생될 모든 사용 후 핵연료연료의 특성(크기, 무게, 초기농축도, 연소도, 냉각기간 등)을 대표할 수 있는 기준 사용 후 핵연료를 선정하였다.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.183-202
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• 2019

For design and performance assessment of a high-level radioactive waste (HLW) disposal system, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) behavior. However, in previous studies for the Korean Reference HLW Disposal System (KRS), thermal analysis was performed to determine the spacing of disposal tunnels and interval of disposition holes without consideration of the coupled THM behavior. Therefore, in this study, TOUGH2-MP/FLAC3D is used to conduct THM modeling for performance assessment of the Korean Reference HLW Disposal System (KRS). The peak temperature remains below the temperature limit of $100^{\circ}C$ for the whole period. A rapid rise of temperature caused by decay heat occurs in the early years, and then temperature begins to decrease as decay heat from the waste decreases. The peak temperature at the bentonite buffer is around $96.2^{\circ}C$ after about 3 years, and peak temperature at the rockmass is $68.2^{\circ}C$ after about 17 years. Saturation of the bentonite block near the canister decreases in the early stage, because water evaporation occurs owing to temperature increase. Then, saturation of the bentonite buffer and backfill increases because of water intake from the rockmass, and bentonite buffer and backfill are fully saturated after about 266 years. The stress is calculated to investigate the effect of thermal stress and swelling pressure on the mechanical behavior of the rockmass. The calculated stress is compared to a spalling criterion and the Mohr-Coulumb criterion for investigation of potential failure. The stress at the rockmass remains below the spalling strength and Mohr-Coulumb criterion for the whole period. The methodology of using the TOUGH2-MP/FLAC3D simulator can be applied to predict the long-term behavior of the KRS under various conditions; these methods will be useful for the design and performance assessment of alternative concepts such as multi-layer and multi-canister concepts for geological spent fuel repositories.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.159-175
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• 2003

During the early stage of radioactive disposal programs, important issues related with quality assurance of data sets, methodologies, R&D procedures are recognized as important ones. This paper focused on the development of web-based workflow standards for the QA procedures of the radioactive waste disposal programs. The flow of process was analyzed based on workflow concepts proposed by the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC). QA system is based on the principles of T2R3. T2R3 Workflow was used to standardize and restructure the business and/or work process in the industry or organization. The WfMC has identified five functional interfaces to a workflow service as part of its standardization program. They are composed of process definition interface, worklist handler, application program interface, interface between workflows, and system management. The task flow and QA program were defined based on the workflow ideas. QA procedures for the R&D results of radiation disoposal were analyzed following the reference model of workflow. In addition, six program run list were created and implemented. The creation, revision, and approval of the test data were designed to be inplemented on the web environment. Through this system, R&D procedures such as planning, research, documentation, internal review and future independent peer review processes could be well organized and stored more systematically on the database and knowledge base. This will encourage the usage and data sharing between interested parties through it's clear and transparent workflow standards.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.87-98
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• 2015

Safety assessments of geological radioactive waste disposal systems, need to consider the abnormal scenario in which a system is impacted by external events in addition to a reference scenario. In this study, the characterization and prediction of an earthquake as an external event which will impact disposal systems were conducted probabilistically and statistically for the safety assessment. The domestic earthquake data were analyzed, and the prediction methodologies of the earthquake were suggested with a computational example. From the results, the earthquake occurrence rates in Korea ranged from 0.4 /yr to 36.2 /yr depending on the data set and the completeness magnitude. From a conservative point of view, the earthquake occurrence rate in the disposal system was suggested as 5.4×10^-4 /yr considering the area of the disposal system. At that time, the completeness magnitude of an earthquake was 2.3. This study will be followed by an appraisal of impacts associated with external events on the geological disposal system, and it will contribute to improvements in reliability of the safety assessment.