During decommissioning and site remediation of nuclear power plant, large amount of wastes (including radioactive waste) with various type will be generated within very short time. Among those wastes, soil and concrete wastes is known to account for more than 70% of total waste generated. So, efficient management of these wastes is very essential for effective NPP decommissioning. Recently, BNS (Best System) developed a system for evaluation and classification of soil and concrete wastes from the generation. The system is composed of various modules for container loading, weight measurement, contamination evaluation, waste classification, stacking, storage and control. By adopting modular type, the system is good for dealing with variable situation where system capacity needs to be expanded or contracted depending on the decommissioning schedule, good for minimizing secondary waste generated during maintenance of failed part and also good for disassemble, transfer and assemble. The contamination evaluation module of the system has two sub module. One is for quick measurement with NaI(Tl) detector and the other is for accurate measurement with HPGe detector. For waste transfer, the system adopts LTS (Linear Transfer System) conveyor system showing low vibration and noise during operation. This will be helpful for minimizing scattering of dust from the waste container. And for real time positioning of waste container, wireless tag was adopted. The tag also used for information management of waste history from the generation. Once a container with about 100 kg of soil or concrete is loaded, it is moved to the weight measurement module and then it transfers to quick measurement module. When measured value for radioactivity concentration of Co- 60 and Cs-137 is more than 1.0 Bq/g, then the container is classified as waste for disposal and directly transferred to stacking and storage rack. Otherwise, the container is transferred to accurate measurement module. At the accurate module, the container is classified as waste for disposal or waste for regulatory clearance depending on the measurement result of 0.1 Bq/g. As the storage rack has a sections for disposal and regulatory clearance respectively, the classified containers will be positioned at one of the sections depending on the results from the contamination evaluation module. The system can control the movement of lots of container at the same time. So, the system will be helpful for the effective nuclear power plant decommissioning in view of time and budget.

이 실험연구는 PSC 교량의 생애주기 프리스트레스 측정용 헤테로코어 광파이버 센서를 개발하기 위한 선행연구이며, 기존의 헤테로코어 변위센서의 정밀도를 향상하기 위한 실험이다. 실험결과 최대 2μm 단위의 변위 변화량을 측정할 수 있었다. 즉, 변위측정 길이가 30cm의 센서모듈을 설계했을 때 설계기준압축강도(fck)가 40MPa인 경우 0.2MPa 단위의 응력변화를 측정이 가능함을 확인하였다. 따라서 본 실험의 결과는 향후 진행될 내부매립용 센서모듈 개발에 유용한 자료로 활용될 수 있을 것으로 판단된다.

The characteristics of filter/adsorber granular activated carbon (F/A GAC) were investigated by measuring various parameters, which include surface area, pore volume, abrasion number, floater, and water-soluble ash. The correlation between parameters was also evaluated. Moreover, rapid small-scale column test (RSSCT) was conducted for adsorption characteristics. Thirteen F/A GAC were tested, and the average values of abrasion number and water-soluble ash were 88.9 and 0.15%, respectively. F/A GAC with the larger external surface area and greater mesopore volume had the lower abrasion number, which indicated that it was worn out relatively easily. Water-soluble ash of coconut-based GAC (about 2.6%) was greater than that of coal-based GAC (less than 1%), and the pH of solution was increased with GAC, which had the higher water-soluble ash. On the other hand, floater of thirteen F/A GAC was divided as two groups, which one group had relatively higher floater (2.7~3.5%) and the other group had lower floater (approximately 0.5%). The results of RSSCT indicated that coconut-based GAC (i.e. relatively higher water-soluble ash) had less adsorption capacity. Moreover, adsorption capacity of coal-based GAC with larger surface area and greater mesopore volume was superior to others.

The effect of activated carbon particle diameter (i.e. US sieve No. 8×10 (dp ≈ 2.19 mm), 18×20 (dp ≈ 0.92 mm), 50×60 (dp ≈ 0.27 mm) and 170×200 (dp ≈ 0.081 mm)) on caffeine adsorption is investigated. BET surface area was increased with decreasing particle diameter (dp), and caffeine adsorption rates increased with decreasing dp. Moreover, pseudo-second order model is predicted the experimental data more accurately than pseudo-first order model, and the fastest rate constant (k2) was 1.7 g mg-1 min-1 when dp was 0.081 mm. Surface diffusion coefficient (Ds) was decreased with decreasing dp based on the minimum sum of square error (SSE). Practically, certain ranges of Ds are acceptable with high reliability (R2) and it is determined that the effect of dp on Ds is unclear. The effect of pH on caffeine adsorption indicated the dependency of m/L ratio (mass liquid ratio) and pHPZC. The pHPZC (i.e. 7.9 ± 0.2) was not affected by dp. The higher caffeine adsorption at pH 4 and pH 7 than at pH 10 is due to pHPZC, not pka of caffeine.

The gene encoding an esterase enzyme was cloned from a metagenomic library of cow rumen bacteria. The esterase gene (est2R) was 2,120 bp in length, encoding a protein of 516 amino acid residues with a calculated molecular weight of 57,286 Da. The molecular weight of the enzyme was estimated to be 57,000 Da by SDS-PAGE. Est2R shared 35.6% amino acid identity with esterase (CAH19079) of uncultured prokaryote. The Est2R was most active at 20-40°C, and showed optimum at 30°C and pH 8.0. The most activity of Est2R for the different chain length of p-nitrophenyl ester group as substrate was p-nitrophenyl acetate. Moreover, the enzyme was found to be most active without organic solvent, followed by 98% active with ethanol, and the enzyme activity was highly affected by the acetonitrile. The enzyme was significantly inhibited by Zn2+ but stimulated by Ca2+. So, novel esterase gene est2R is likely to obtain from cow rumen metagenome and supposed to use for industrial purpose.