• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.16-25
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• 2020

Background: To investigate radiological effects on biota, it is necessary to assess radiation dose for flora and fauna living in a terrestrial ecosystem. This paper presents a dynamic model to assess radioactivity concentration and radiation dose of terrestrial flora and fauna after a nuclear accident. Materials and Methods: Litter, organic soil, mineral soil, trees, wild crops, herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores are considered the major components of a terrestrial ecosystem. The model considers the physicochemical and biological processes of interception, weathering, decomposition of litter, percolation, root uptake, leaching, radioactive decay, and biological loss of animals. The predictive capability of the model was investigated by comparison of its predictions with field data for biota measured in the Fukushima forest area after the Fukushima nuclear accident. Results and Discussion: The predicted radioactive cesium inventories for trees agreed well with those for evergreens and deciduous trees sampled in the Fukushima area. The predicted temporal radioactivity concentrations for animals were within the range of the measured radioactivity concentrations of deer, wild boars, and black bears. The radiation dose for the animals were, for the whole simulation time, estimated to be much smaller than the lower limit (0.1 mGy·d^-1) of the derived consideration reference level given by the International Commission on Radiological Protection for terrestrial flora and fauna. This suggested that the radiation effect of the accident on the biota in the Fukushima forest would be insignificant. Conclusion: The present dynamic model can be used effectively to investigate the radiological risk to terrestrial ecosystems following a nuclear accident.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.82-89
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• 2011

Understanding snowmelt movement to the watershed is crucial for both climate change and hydrological studies because the snowmelt is a significant component of groundwater and surface runoff in temperature area. In this work, a new energy balance budget algorithm has been developed for melting snow from a snowpack at the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory (CSSL) in California, US. Using two sets of experiments, artificial rain-on-snow experiments and observations of diel variations, carried out in the winter of 2002 and 2003, we investigate how to calculate the amount of snowmelt from the snowpack using radiation energy and air temperature. To address the effect of air temperature, we calculate the integrated daily solar radiation energy input, and the integrated discharge of snowmelt under the snowpack and the energy required to generate such an amount of meltwater. The difference between the two is the excess (or deficit) energy input and we compare this energy to the average daily temperature. The resulting empirical relationship is used to calculate the instantaneous snowmelt rate in the model used by Lee et al. (2008a; 2010), in addition to the net-short radiation. If for a given 10 minute interval, the energy obtained by the melt calculation is negative, then no melt is generated. The input energy from the sun is considered to be used to increase the temperature of the snowpack. Positive energy is used for melting snow for the 10-minute interval. Using this energy budget algorithm, we optimize the intrinsic permeability of the snowpack for the two sets of experiments using one-dimensional water percolation model, which are $52.5{\times}10^{-10}m^2$ and $75{\times}10^{-10}m^2$ for the artificial rain-on-snow experiments and observations of diel variation, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.08a
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• pp.316-316
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• 2010

Thin films spin-coated from solvent solutions are characterized by solution parameters and spin-coating process. In this study, performance characteristics of polymer solar cells were investigated with changing solution parameters such as solvent and additives. The phase-separation between polymer and fullerene is needed to make the percolation pathway for better transportation of hole and electron in polymer solar cells. For this reason, cooperative effects of solvent mixtures adding additives with distinct solubility have been studied recently. In this study, chlorobezene, 1, 2-dichlorbenzene, and chloroform were used as solvent. 1, 8-diiodoctaned and 1, 8-octanedithiol were used as additives and were added into poly(3-hexylthiophene-2, 5-diyl)/[6, 6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester (P3HT/PCBM) blends. Pre-patterned ITO glass was cleaned using ultrasonication in mixed solvent with ethyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol and acetone. PEDOT:PSS was spin-coated on to the ITO substrate at 3000rpm and was baked at $120^{\circ}C$ for 10min on the hotplate. The prepared solution was spin-coated at 1000rpm and the spin-coated thin film was dried in the Petri dishes. Al electrode was deposited on the thin film by thermal evaporation. The devices were annealed at $120^{\circ}C$ for 30min. By adding 2.5 volume percent of additives into the chlorobenzene from that bulk heterojunction films consisting of P3HT/PCBM, the power efficiency (AM 1.5G conditions) was increased from 2.16% to 2.69% and 3.12% respectively. We have investigated the effect of additives in P3HT/PCBM blends and the film characteristics and the film characteristics including J-V characteristics, absorption, photoluminescence, X-ray diffraction, and atomic force microscopy to mainly depict the morphology control by doping additives.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.231-243
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• 2015

Four different paddy soils collected around the Gyeongju nuclear site were treated with $^{99}TcO_4{^-}$ solution under the assumption of two contrasting contamination scenarios. Scenario I (SN-I) is for a pre-transplanting deposition of $^{99}Tc$ followed by plowing, whereas SN-II is for its deposition onto the water surface shortly after transplanting. Rice plants were grown in lysimeters in a greenhouse. Plant uptake of $^{99}Tc$ was quantified with the $TF_{area}$ ($m^2{\cdot}kg^{-1}-dry$). The SN-II $TF_{area}$ values for straws and brown rice, having been generally higher than the SN-I values, were within the ranges of $6.9{\times}10^{-3}{\sim}4.1{\times}10^{-2}$ and $5.2{\times}10^{-6}{\sim}7.3{\times}10^{-5}$, respectively. Sorption onto clay seems to have decreased $^{99}Tc$ uptake in SN-I, whereas it may have had an insignificant effect in SN-II. A phenomenon characteristic of submerged paddy soil, i.e., the development of a thin oxic surface layer may have greatly affected the rice uptake of SN-II $^{99}Tc$. The surface-water concentrations of $^{99}Tc$ were much higher in SN-II than in SN-I. For the percolating water, however, the opposite was generally true. At most 1.3% of the applied $^{99}Tc$ were leached through such percolation. The use of empirical deposition time-dependent $TF_{area}$ values was considered desirable in assessing the radiological impact of a growing-season deposition of $^{99}Tc$ onto paddy fields.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.410-415
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• 2013

$ZrB_2$-SiC ceramics are fabricated via hot pressing with different ratios of submicron or nano-sized SiC in a $ZrB_2$-20 vol%SiC system, in order to examine the effect of the SiC size ratio on the microstructures and physical properties, such as thermal conductivity, hardness, and flexural strength, of $ZrB_2$-SiC ceramics. Five different $ZrB_2$-SiC ceramics ($ZrB_2$-20 vol%[(1-x)SiC + xnanoSiC] where x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.5, 0.8, 1.0) are prepared in this study. The mean SiC particle sizes in the sintered bodies are highly dependent on the ratio of nano-sized SiC. The thermal conductivities of the $ZrB_2$-SiC ceramics increase with the ratio of nano-sized SiC, which is consistent with the percolation behavior. In addition, the $ZrB_2$-SiC ceramics with smaller mean SiC particle sizes exhibit enhanced mechanical properties, such as hardness and flexural strength, which can be explained using the Hall-Petch relation.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.314-320
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• 2021

Controlling ambient humid condition through high performance humidity sensors has become important for various fields, including industrial process, food storage, and the preservation of historic remains. Although aerosol deposited humidity sensors using ceramic BaTiO₃ (BT) material have been widely studied because of their longtime stability, there remain critical disadvantages, such as low sensitivity, low linearity, and slow response/recovery time in case of the sensors fabricated at room temperature. To achieve superior humidity sensing properties even at room temperature condition, BT-Cu composite films utilizing aerosol deposition (AD) process have been proposed based on the percolation theory. The BT-Cu composite films showed gradually improved sensing properties until the Cu concentration reached 15 wt% in the composite film. However, the excessive Cu (above 30 wt%) containing BT-Cu composite films showed a rapid decrease of the sensing properties. The results of observed surface morphology of the AD fabricated composite films, to figure out the metal filler effect, showed correlation between surface topography as well as size and the amount of open pores according to the metal filler content. Overall, it is very important not only dielectric constant of the humidity sensing films but also microstructures, because they affect either the variation range of capacitance by ambient humidity or adsorption/desorption of ambient humidity onto/from the humidity sensing films.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.379-387
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• 2022

A large amount of the mineral nitrogen is necessary for crop growth. With the use of nitrogen fertilizers, agricultural yield has increased during the last few decades. However, at the same time, nitrate from the cultivated land can be a source of environmental pollution, especially in water systems. For nitrogen management, it is necessary to analyze the pattern of nitrogen movement in soil. In this study, nitrogen leaching in upland soils was evaluated using undisturbed lysimeters with different soil textures during sesame cultivation. The soil texture of the lysimeters was clay loam (Songjung series) and sandy loam (Sangju series) soils. Sesame was cultivated from May 25 to August 24 in 2020. The standard amount of NPK fertilizer (N-P₂O₅-K₂O = 2.9-3.1-3.2 kg·10 a^-1) was applied before sowing. The amount of nitrogen leaching was calculated by multiplying the nitrogen (NO₃-N + NH₄-N) concentration and the amount of water drained below 1.5 m soil depth. The water was drained through percolation into macropores in the clay loam lysimeter. In contrast, in the sandy loam lysimeter, water drained more slowly than in the clay loam lysimeter. There was a slight difference in the total amount of leachate during the cultivation period, but the amount of nitrogen leaching was high in sandy loam soil. During the sesame cultivation period, the amount of nitrogen leaching from clay soil was 5.64 kg·10 a^-1, and 10.70 kg·10 a^-1 for sandy soil. We found that there was a difference in leaching depending on the soil physical characteristics. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the characteristics of soil to evaluate the leaching of nitrogen.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.39 no.10 s.171
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• pp.881-890
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• 2006

Hydrological characteristics and urbanization effects in the Gap river catchment were investigated employing the SWAT model. The hydrological characteristics analysis showed that total runoff in the whole catchment from 2001 to 2004 consists of 44% of groundwater flow, 6% of lateral flow and 50% of surface flow under year 2000 landuse conditions. The analysis of urbanization effect using different landuse maps for year 1975 and 2000 indicated that although 5% increase in urbanized areas did not significantly impact on the total runoff in the whole catchment, a sub-basin where urbanized area increased by 32% over the past 30 years showed $68{\sim}73%$ decrease in groundwater flow and $22{\sim}66%$ increase in surface flow. It was found that urbanization decreased overall soil moisture and percolation rate except for some increase in soil moisture during dry season. Urbanization effect was found more sensitive during a dry year which has less rainfall and higher evapotranspiration than during a wet year. Therefore, from the results of this study we could infer increased flood damage during wet season and dried stream during dry season due to urbanization. To conclude, the results of this study can provide fundamental information to the eco-friendly restoration project for the three major rivers (Gap-cheon, Yudeung-cheon and Daejeon-cheon) in Daejeon Metropolitan City.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.164-171
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• 2005

The aim of this study was to evaluate the load of nutrient from paddy fields. Water management practices that can reduce eutrophication and meet water quality requirements will also be addressed. Continuous monitoring from May to September in 2002 and 2003 was conducted for water quantification and qualification at the intensive paddy fields in Icheon, Gyunggi province of Korea. Water balance and concentration variation of nitrogen and phosphorus in the water were independently compared for water quality assessment at each rice cultivation period. Rice land preparation and transplanting periods usually marked the highest water demand when compared to other periods of cultivation. Overall, a greater net irrigation ratio was observed during the transplanting period in 2002 (92.3%) and 2003 (87.2%). The measured total N loads of precipitation, irrigation, drainage, and percolation during the rice cultivation period were 9.9, 41.6, 22.1, and $5.5kg\;ha^{-1}$ for 2002 and 15.8, 55.4, 17.3, and $7.5kg\;ha^{-1}$ for 2003, respectively. The measured total P loads of precipitation, irrigation, drainage, and percolation during the rice cultivation period were 2.1, 13.0, 3.6, and $1.8kg\;ha^{-1}$ for 2002 and 1.6, 15.0, 5.0, and $1.2kg\;ha^{-1}$ for 2003, respectively. Daily nutrient load followed the pattern of surface drainage water, but this pattern was changed by rainfall events. The nutrient load in drainage water depends on rainfall and surface drainage water amount from the paddy fields. Interestingly, the load of total N and total P output was smaller than the input load due to the natural infiltration that Occurred during the rice cultivation period. It is concluded that the paddy fields have a beneficial effect on the ecosystem and can reduce eutrophication in the water.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.224-231
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• 1984

Four kinds of soil conditioners, such as red earth, clayey tidal deposit, silty tidal deposit and tertiary deposit were evaluated for the rice growth and for the effectiveness of soil improvement in sandy paddy soil (Gangseo series) whose percolation and nutrient leaching are usually severe. Experiment was conducted at the farmer's field in Hackpo Ri, Bugog Myeon, Changyeong Gun, Gyeong Nam Province for two years (1980-1981) with using two rice varieties, Milyang 42 for 1980 and cheongcheongbyeo for 1981. For both experimental years, the grain yields were increased on the plots that were treated with soil conditioners compared with nontreated plot. The increase in grain yield was particularly high on the plots treated with clayey tidal deposit and teritary deposit. The dry weight of the plant and the uptake amount of inorganic ingredient tended to increase on the plots of clayey tidal deposit and tertiary deposit during whole rice growing season because of the residual effect of soil conditioners in the second experimental year. Cation exchange capacity, available silicate, exchangeable potassium and active iron was increased by the treatment with the soil conditoners. Especially cation exchange capacity was highest in the tertiary deposit treatment plot. Aggregation content and plastic index were increased for the all treatment plots with soil conditioner, however, hydraulic conductivity was conspicuously decreased by the tertiary deposit and clayey tidal deposit treatments.