• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.175-182
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• 2023

APro, a modularized process-based total system performance assessment framework, was developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) to simulate radionuclide transport considering coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical-chemical processes occurring in a geological disposal system. For reactive transport simulation considering geochemical reactions, COMSOL and PHREEQC are coupled with MATLAB in APro using an operator splitting scheme. Conventionally, coupling is performed within a MATLAB interface so that COMSOL stops the calculation to deliver the solution to PHREEQC and restarts to continue the simulation after receiving the solution from PHREEQC at every time step. This is inefficient when the solution is frequently interchanged because restarting the simulation in COMSOL requires an unnecessary setup process. To overcome this issue, a coupling scheme that calls PHREEQC inside COMSOL was developed. In this technique, PHREEQC is called through the "MATLAB function" feature, and PHREEQC results are updated using the COMSOL "Pointwise Constraint" feature. For the one-dimensional advection-reaction-dispersion problem, the proposed coupling technique was verified by comparison with the conventional coupling technique, and it improved the computation time for all test cases. Specifically, the more frequent the link between COMSOL and PHREEQC, the more pronounced was the performance improvement using the proposed technique.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.283-294
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• 2023

APro, developed in KAERI for the process-based total system performance assessment (TSPA) of deep geological disposal systems, performs finite element method (FEM)-based multiphysics analysis. In the FEM-based analysis, the mesh element quality influences the numerical solution accuracy, memory requirement, and computation time. Therefore, an appropriate mesh structure should be constructed before the mesh stability analysis to achieve an accurate and efficient process-based TSPA. A generic reference case of DECOVALEX-2023 Task F, which has been proposed for simulating stationary groundwater flow and time-dependent conservative transport of two tracers, was used in this study for mesh stability analysis. The relative differences in tracer concentration varying mesh structures were determined by comparing with the results for the finest mesh structure. For calculation efficiency, the memory requirements and computation time were compared. Based on the mesh stability analysis, an approach based on adaptive mesh refinement was developed to resolve the error in the early stage of the simulation time-period. It was observed that the relative difference in the tracer concentration significantly decreased with high calculation efficiency.

• 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.206-213
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• 2003

Laboratory testing of representative rock specimens is of fundamental necessity for the successful design and/or assessment of facilities associated with many kinds of underground exploitation, including the geological disposal of radioactive nuclear waste. As a fundamental and systematic study, a series of measurements of the physical, mechanical and hydraulic properties of Inada granite and Shirahama sandstone, two rock types that are widely available in Japan, have been performed. This paper presents the results of a study of the effective porosity, density, compressive and shear wave velocity, unconfined compressive strength and permeability of the two rocks. The anisotropy and the effects of confining pressure on the permeability of the rocks, as well as the relationships among the physical, mechanical and hydraulic properties, are also investigated and discussed.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.11-15
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• 1985

Nowadays, there are many situations which the conventional control system can't be applied any more (e.g. nuclear waste disposal sites, radioactive laboratories, the deep ocean and the vacuum of the outer space). New control system must be considered such as supervisory control system in those environment. Using computer graphic robot simulation, supervisory control which can cope with this situation is compared to manual control. As a performance measure of these comparisons, task time and task error are used. And task difficulties and time delay are considered as a variation factor. According to the result of this study, supervisory control is superior to manual control generally. Especially in the situation including task difficulties and time delay, the superiority is much greater.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.155-161
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• 1999

본 연구는 대표적인 혐오시설로 지역주민들에 의하여 기피되고 있는 방사성폐기물처분시설에 대한 주민들의 '수용의지'를 시스템 역학 모델을 통하여 분석하고, 개별요인들의 상대적 영향력의 크기를 규명하고자 하였다. 본 연구는 지역주민들의 정책수용거부에 대한 단선적이고 편협한 이해가 오히려 합리적인 시설입지전략의 구성을 어렵게 만들 수 있다는 인식 아래, 도넛효과(Doughnut-effect)가 발생하고 있는 울진원전 주변지역에 대한 실증분석을 통하여 지역사회의 정책결정과정 참여가 가장 중요한 문제해결요인임을 밝혔으며, 향후 사업추진측의 입지노력이 집중되어야 할 전략적 정책수행요인들을 제시하였다.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.1236-1251
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• 2015

This study examined understanding and attitude of sustainable development(SD) of 38 college students in a nuclear power plant construction after education for sustainable development(ESD) through panel discussion. The results were as follows: First, after lesson 66% of students were expected that SD is possible if scientific technology is developed and a frugal life for the protection of environment is carried out. However, the remaining students regarded SD as an ideal concept, because they thought it is not possible to pursue environmental sustainability and socio-economic development simultaneously. Second, students' opinions in the evaluation of constructing a nuclear power plant in three aspects(environment, society and economy) before and after panel discussion were changed as follows; 1) After panel discussion, the objectors increased to 21% in economic evaluation, while the supporters increased to 11% in environmental evaluation. 2) Students majoring in engineering or natural sciences changed their opinions to agree in environmental evaluation because they considered a nuclear power plant safe and eco-energy. However students majoring in social science/business or liberal arts/arts changed their opinions to disagree in economic evaluation because they considered a nuclear power plant as high-cost energy when assessing danger-accidents cost, public consensus cost, operation and maintenance cost, and waste disposal cost. 3) This change of decision-making in students majoring in social science/business or liberal arts/arts after panel discussion was statistically significant(p<0.05). Implications of panel discussion as a teaching and learning method in ESD are also discussed.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.89-98
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• 1993

As the construction of nuclear power plants are increased, nuclear wastes disposal has been faced as a serious problem. If nuclear wastes are to be buried in the underground stratum, thermo-mechanical behavior of stratum must be analyzed, because high temperature distribution has a significant effect on tunnel and surrounding stratum. In this study, in order to analyze the structural behavior of the underground which is subject to concentrated heat sources, a coupling method of nonlinear finite elements and linear boundary elements is proposed. The nonlinear finite elements (NFE) are applied in the vicinity of nuclear depository where thermo-mechanical stress is concentrated. The boundary elements are also used in infinite domain where linear behavior is expected. Using the similar method as for the problem in mechanical field, the coupled nonlinear finite element-boundary element (NFEBE) is developed. It is found that NFEBE method is more efficient than NFE which considers nonlinearity in the whole domain for the nuclear wastes depository that is expected to exhibit local nonlinearity behavior. The effect of coefficients of the rock mass such as Poisson's ratio, elastic modulus, thermal diffusivity and thermal expansion coefficient is investigated through the developed method. As a result, it is revealed that the displacements around tunnel are largely dependent on the thermal expansion coefficients.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.279-298
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• 2019

This study comprehensively addresses recent progress at KAERI in waste treatment technology to cope with waste produced by pyroprocessing, which is used to effectively manage spent fuel. The goal of pyroprocessing waste treatment is to reduce final waste volume, fabricate durable waste forms suitable for disposal, and ensure safe packaging and storage. KAERI employs grouping of fission products recovered from process streams and immobilizes them in separate waste forms, resulting in product recycling and waste volume minimization. Novel aspects of KAERI approach include high temperature treatment of spent oxide fuel for the fabrication of feed materials for the oxide reduction process, and fission product concentration or separation from LiCl or LiCl-KCl salt streams for salt recycling and higher fission-product loading in the final waste form. Based on laboratory-scale tests, an engineering-scale process test is in progress to obtain information on the performance of scale-up processes at KAERI.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 2006

For the accurate safety assessment of potential radioactive waste disposal site which is located in the crystalline rock it is important to simulate the mass transportation through engineered and natural barrier system precisely, characterized by porous and fractured media respectively. In this work the methods to construct discrete fracture network for the analysis of flow and mass transport through fractured-porous medium are described. The probability density function is adopted in generating fracture properties for the realistic representation of real fractured rock. In order to investigate the intersection between a porous and a fractured medium described by a 2 dimensional rectangular and a cuboid grid respectively, an additional imaginary fracture is adopted at the face of a porous medium intersected by a fracture. In order to construct large scale flow paths an effective method to find interconnected fractures and algorithms of swift detecting connectivities between fractures or porous medium and fractures are proposed. These methods are expected to contribute to the development of numerical program for the simulation of radioactive nuclide transport through fractured-porous medium from radioactive waste disposal site.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.13-21
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• 2011

To characterize the site specific properties of a study area for high-level radioactive waste disposal research in KAERI, the several geological investigations such as surface geological surveys and borehole drillings were carried out since 1997. Especially, KURT (KAERI Underground Research Tunnel) was constructed to understand the further study of geological environments in 2006. As a result, the first geological model of a study area was constructed by using the results of geological investigation. The objective of this research is to construct a hydrogeological model around KURT area on the basis of the geological model. Hydrogeological data which were obtained from in-situ hydraulic tests in the 9 boreholes were estimated to accomplish the objective. And, the hydrogeological properties of the 4 geological elements in the geological model, which were the subsurface weathering zone, the log angle fracture zone, the fracture zones and the bedrock were suggested. The hydrogeological model suggested in this study will be used as input parameters to carry out the groundwater flow modeling as a next step of the site characterization around KURT area.