• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.312-338
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• 2023

The underground disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel demands a specialized design, distinct from conventional practices, to ensure long-term thermal, mechanical, and hydraulic integrity, preventing the release of radioactive isotopes from high-temperature spent nuclear fuel. SKB has established design criteria for such facilities and executed practical design implementations for Forsmark. Moreover, in response to subsurface uncertainty, SKB has proposed an empirical approach involving monitoring and adaptive design modifications, alongside stepwise development. SKB has further introduced a unique support system, categorizing ground types and behaviors and aligning them with corresponding support types to confirm safety through comparative analyses against existing systems. POSIVA has pursued a comparable approach, developing a support system for Onkalo while accounting for distinct geological characteristics compared to Forsmark. This demonstrates the potential for domestic implementation of spent nuclear fuel disposal facility designs and the establishment of a support system adapted to national attributes.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.373-379
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• 2022

The radiation source used for non-destructive testing have permeability and cause a scattered radiation through collisions of surrounding materials, which causes changes in the surrounding spatial dose. Therefore, this study attempted to evaluate and analyze the distribution of spatial dose by source in the working environment during the non-destructive test using monte carlo simulation. In this study, Using FLUKA, a simulation code, simulates ⁶⁰Co, ¹⁹²Ir, and ⁷⁵Se source used in non-destructive testing, The reliability of the source term was secured by comparing the calculated dose rate with the data of the Health and Physics Association. After that, a non-destructive test in the radiation safety facility(RT-room) was designed to evaluate the spatial dose according to the distance from the source. As a result of the spatial dose evaluation, ⁷⁵Se source showed the lowest dose distribution in the frontal position and ⁶⁰Co source showed a dose rate of about 15 times higher than that of ⁷⁵Se and about 2 times higher than that of ¹⁹²Ir. In addition, the spatial dose according to the distance tends to decrease according to the distance inverse square law as the distance from the source increases. Exceptionally, ⁶⁰Co, ¹⁹²Ir, and ⁷⁵Se sources confirmed a slight increase within 2 m of position. Based on the results of this study, it is believed that it will be used as supplementary data for safety management of workers in radiation safety facilities during non-destructive testing using radioactive isotopes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.282-287
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was predicted the effects of mixing and diffusion due to the operation of the apparatus before the development of the mixed diffusion device for the decontamination absorbent to minimize the influence of contaminant inflow due to radiation accident. The tracer used for the flow characteristics was $^{68}Ga$, $^{99m}Tc$, which is a radioactive isotope, and 2 inch NaI radiation detector was used to detect it. The impeller of the decontamination mixed diffusion system applied to this study was made into three types and the mixing diffusion effect was compared. As a result of analyzing the flow characteristics of the radio-isotope with decontamination mixed diffusion device, mixing, diffusion and flow pattern were obtained. The radial mixing type impeller was able to diffuse to the water surface by the upflow flow, and the fin structure was adjusted for finding optimal conditions. The model 3 type consists of a fin guiding part and an auxiliary fin so that the diffusion speed is higher than that of other types of impellers. It also showed a short time to reach complete mixing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.243-244
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• 2013

Over the past 15 years, several groups have incorporated radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ) based instruments before the accelerator in accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) systems for ion-gas interactions at low kinetic energy (＜40 eV). Most AMS systems arebased on a tandem accelerator, which requires negative ions at injection. Typically, AMS sensitivity abundance ratios for radioactive-to-stable isotope are limited to Xr/Xs ＞10^-15, and the range of isotopes that can be analyzed is limited because of theneed to produce rather large negative ion beams and the presence of atomic isobaric interferences after stripping. The potential of using low-kinetic energy ion-gas interactions for isobar suppression before the accelerator has been demonstrated for several negative ion isobar systems with a prototype RFQ system incorporated into the AMS system at IsoTrace Laboratory, Canada (Ontario, Toronto). Requisite for any such RFQ system applied to very rare isotope analysis is large transmission of the analyte ion. This requires proper phase-space matching between the RFQ acceptance and the ion beam phase space (e.g. 35 keV, ${\varphi}3mm$, +-35 mrad), and the ability to control the average ion energy during interactions with the gas. A segmented RFQ instrument is currently being designed at Korea Institute for Science and Technology (한국과학기술연구원, KIST). It will consist of: a) an initial static voltage electrode deceleration region, to lower the ion energy from 35 keV down to ＜40 eV at injection into the first RFQ segment; b) the segmented quadrupole ion-gas interaction region; c) a static voltage electrode re-acceleration region for ion injection into a tandem accelerator. Design considerations and modeling will be discussed. This system should greatly lower the detection limits of the 6 MV AMS system currently being commissioned at KIST. As an example, current detection sensitivity of 41Ca/Ca is limited to the order of 10^-15 while the 41Ca/Ca abundance in modern samples is typically 41Ca/Ca~10^-14 - 10^-15. The major atomic isobaric interference in AMS is 41K. Proof-of-principal work at IsoTrace Lab. has demonstrated that a properly designed system can achieve a relative suppression of KF3-/41CaF3- ＞4 orders of magnitude while maintaining very high transmission of the 41CaF3- ion. This would lower the 41Ca detection limits of the KIST AMS system to at least 41Ca/Ca~10^-19. As Ca is found in bones and shells, this would potentially allow direct dating of valuable anthropological archives and archives relevant to our understanding of the most pronounced climate change events over the past million years that cannot be directly dated with the presently accessible isotopes.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.10
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• pp.3913-3923
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• 2023

Todays, medium energy resolution detectors are preferably used in radioisotope identification devices(RID) in nuclear and radioactive material categorization. However, there is still a need to develop or enhance « automated identifiers » for the useful RID algorithms. To decide whether any material is SNM or NORM, a key parameter is the better energy resolution of the detector. Although masking, shielding and gain shift/stabilization and other affecting parameters on site are also important for successful operations, the suitability of the RID algorithm is also a critical point to enhance the identification reliability while extracting the features from the spectral analysis. In this study, a RID algorithm based on Bayesian statistical method has been modified for medium energy resolution detectors and applied to the uranium gamma-ray spectra taken by a LaBr3:Ce detector. The present Bayesian RID algorithm covers up to 2000 keV energy range. It uses the peak centroids, the peak areas from the measured gamma-ray spectra. The extraction features are derived from the peak-based Bayesian classifiers to estimate a posterior probability for each isotope in the ANSI library. The program operations were tested under a MATLAB platform. The present peak based Bayesian RID algorithm was validated by using single isotopes(²⁴¹Am, ⁵⁷Co, ¹³⁷Cs, ⁵⁴Mn, ⁶⁰Co), and then applied to five standard nuclear materials(0.32-4.51% at.²³⁵U), as well as natural U- and Th-ores. The ID performance of the RID algorithm was quantified in terms of F-score for each isotope. The posterior probability is calculated to be 54.5-74.4% for ²³⁸U and 4.7-10.5% for ²³⁵U in EC-NRM171 uranium materials. For the case of the more complex gamma-ray spectra from CRMs, the total scoring (ST) method was preferred for its ID performance evaluation. It was shown that the present peak based Bayesian RID algorithm can be applied to identify ²³⁵U and ²³⁸U isotopes in LEU or natural U-Th samples if a medium energy resolution detector is was in the measurements.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.541-546
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• 2015

Global energy shortage problem is expected to increase driven by strong energy demand growth from developing countries. Nuclear fusion power offers the prospect of an almost infinite source of energy for future generations. Hydrogen isotope storage and delivery system is a important subsystem of a nuclear fusion fuel cycle. Metal hydride is a method of the high-density storage of hydrogen isotope. For the safety storage of hydrogen isotope, depleted uranium (DU) has been widely proposed. But DU needs a safe test because It is a radioactive substance. The authors studied a small-scale DU bed and a medium-scale DU bed for the safety test. And then we made a large-scale DU bed and stored hydrogen isotopes in the bed. Before the hydriding/dehydriding, we tested it's heating and cooling properties and carried out an activation procedure. As a result, Reaction rate of DU-$H_2$ is more rapid than the other metal hydride ZrCo. Through the successful storage result of our large bed, the development possibility of the hydrogen isotope storage technology seems promising.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.121-126
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• 2008

Radioactivities of the stack air effluents from the Advance Fuel Science Building (AFSB) at KAERI have been investigated and evaluated. In this AFSB, nuclear fuels for the HANARO research reactor have been fabricated and the advanced nuclear fuels have been studied. A stack air monitoring system has been continuously operating to monitor the stack air effluents from the facility to protect the environment. As the results of the periodical radioactivity measurement and both the gamma and alpha spectrometry for the millipore filters taken from the stack air monitor from January until March 2008, a trace amount of primordial $^{40}K$ and the short-lived decay products of natural borne $^{222}Rn$ and $^{220}Rn$ have been detected. However, the radioactivities have rapidly decayed to the level below the Minimum Detectable Activity (MDA) of the counting system. Therefore, it was evaluated that no uranium isotopes have been released to the atmosphere from the stack of the AFSB at KAERI.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.207-212
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• 1982

Soils and sediments have been uniquely tagged by radioactive isotopes as a result of nuclear test explosions in the 1950's and 1960's. Fallout $^{137}Cs$ strongly fixed to fine soil particles, was measured in sediment profiles in Larto Lake to calculate the sedimentation rate as a time dependence. The Lake sediment profiles indicated an average rate of 1.6 to 3.1 cm/yr of sediment deposition since 1958. The rate of sediment depositions clearly decreased with time. Particle size distribution in sediment was reflected almost fine particles in lake.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.63 no.2
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• pp.284-290
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• 2014

A fiber-optic beta/gamma dual detector system with two types of sensing probes was fabricated to detect the beta- and gamma-rays simultaneously. As scintillators of the sensing probe type 1, two different inorganic scintillators, $CaF_2(Eu)$ and LYSO(Ce) crystals, were used to obtain the each scintillating efficiency with respect to beta-and gamma-rays and the inherent energy spectra of radioactive isotopes. In the case of the sensing probe type 2, which is composed of two identical inorganic scintillators and a beta shielding material based on the lead, it could discriminate beta- and gamma-rays using a subtraction method. In conclusion, we demonstrated that the proposed fiber-optic beta/gamma dual detector could measure and discriminate beta- and gamma-rays using both energy spectroscopy and subtraction method.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2008

Technisium $(^{99m}Tc)$ is one of the most widely used radioactive isotopes for diagnosis in nuclear medicine. In general, technisium is produced inside the so called $^{99m}Tc$ generator which is usually made out of lead to shield relatively high energy radiation from $^{99}Mo$ and its daughter nuclide $^{99m}Tc$. In this paper, a GEANT4 simulation is carried out to test the safety of the $^{99m}Tc$ generator, taking the Daiichi product with radioactivity of 500 mCi as an example. According to the domestic regulation on radiation safety, the dose at 10 cm and 100 cm away from the surface of shielding container should not exceed 2.0 mSv/h and 0.02 mSv/h, respectively. The simulated dose turned out to be less than the limit, satisfying the domestic regulation.