Radioactive waste must be stored for at least 300 years and must bear astronomical costs. In addition, unexpected potential risk factors are also a considerable burden. In the case of low-level radioactive waste, combustible and liquid low-contamination radioactive waste can be treated relatively easily through high-temperature plasma which the volume can be reduced by 1/250 and the weight by 1/30. It is possible to permanently dispose of the ash leached after plasma treatment in a more stable manner compared to the conventional methods. Types of low-level combustible radioactive waste, including paper, vinyl, clothing, filters, and resins, account for more than 30% of the total waste volume. Furthermore, high-temperature plasma treatment of low-level radioactive waste from petrochemical plants and medical institutions have many advantages, namely astronomical cost savings, securing free space in existing storage facilities, and improving the image of nuclear energy. Korea is preparing to decommission the Kori No. 1 nuclear power plant, and small and mediumsized enterprises and related organizations are conducting various studies to incinerate radioactive waste. In foreign countries, Britain began incineration technology in the 1970s, and Plasma Energy Group, LLC, headquartered in Florida, USA, physically changed the molecular structure of the material by combining plasma chambers and plasma arcs and obtained a patent application in 1992. Germany was approved for operation in 2002, and Switzerland completed a trial run of a plasma technologybased facility in 2004. Important radionuclides in terms of radioactive gas waste treatment include inert gases, radioiodine, and radioactive suspended particles. Gas waste is compressed in a compressor through a surge tank in the gas waste treatment system and filters at each stage. after that, the shortlife nuclide is naturally collapsed for 30 to 60 days in the storage or activated carbon adsorbent in the attenuation tank and released through HEPA filters. The radioactive concentration at discharge is monitored and managed using continuous monitoring equipment, and the oxygen concentration is managed in the gas waste treatment system to prevent explosion risk. The problem of radioactive waste disposal is not only a problem for people living in the present era, but also a big social issue that brings a burden to future generations While interest in plasma treatment is increasing from the decommissioning of the Kori Unit 1. in Korea, it is showed that there is a lack of systematic management and research especially in the radioactive volatile gases fields, that’s why I propose some ideas as follows. First, the government and related institutions should invest to the continuous radioactive monitoring system to produce and distribute continuous radioactive monitoring facilities with an affordable price. Second, it is recommended that radioactive waste incineration would be connected to the GRS system of the plant’s gas radwaste treatment system, and radioactive volatile materials should be monitored through continuous monitoring system. Third, radioactive volatile materials generated according to the temperatures and times during plasma incineration treatment are different. Therefore, prior classification of each expected radioactive volatile substance must be performed before incineration.

The high-level nuclear waste (HLW) repository is a 500-1,000 m deep underground structure to dispose high-level nuclear waste. The waste has a very long half-time and is exposed to a number of stresses, including high temperatures, high humidity, high pressure These stresses cause the structure to deteriorate and create cracks. Therefore, structural health monitoring with monitoring sensors is required for safety. However, sensors could also fail due to the stresses, especially high temperature. Given that the sensors are installed in the bentonite buffer and the backfill tunnel, it is impossible to replace them if they fail. That’s why it is necessary to assess the sensors’ durability under the repository’s environmental conditions before installing them. Accelerated life test (ALT) can be used to assess durability or life of the sensors, and it is important to obtain the same failure mode for reliability tests including ALT. Before conducting the test, the proper stress level must be designed first to get reliable data in a short time. After that, acceleration of life reduction with increasing temperature and temperature-life model should be determined with some statistical methods. In this study, a methodology for designing stress levels and predicting the life of the sensor were described.

As the use of nuclear energy has been expanded, issues in a spent nuclear fuel management are raised. Several methods have been proposed and developed to manage spent fuels safely and efficiently. One method is to reduce environmental burden in disposal of spent fuels by decreasing volume of high-level waste. A nuclides management process (NMP) is one example. Through this novel process, it is able to separate highly mobile nuclides (ex. iodine, krypton), high thermal emission nuclides (ex. strontium, barium), and optionally, uranium from spent fuels. Since the NMP is a back-end fuel cycle technology, a reliable safeguards system should be employed in the facility. As international atomic energy agency (IAEA) recommends safeguards-by-design (SBD), it is desirable to investigate an appropriate safeguards approach at a step of technology development. Process monitoring (PM) is a complemental safeguards technology for traditional safeguards technologies which based on mass balance. PM traces nuclear materials indirectly but consecutively by using process parameters such as temperature, pressure, and flow of fluid. These parameters are obtainable by installing appropriate sensors. In a respect of SBD, PM is a promising approach to achieve the safeguards goal, the timely detection of diversion of a nuclear material. However, it is necessary to classify useful process parameters from all available signals which provided from PM in order to properly utilize PM. In this study, we investigated application methods of the PM approach to NMP. NMP consists of several unit processes in series. Firstly, we inspected a principle and a feature of each unit process. Based on the results, we evaluated applicability of the PM approach to each unit process according to effectiveness in enhancing safeguardability. Several unit processes were expected that their safeguards are able to be enhanced by using certain process parameters from PM.

Satellite imagery is an effective supplementary material for detecting and verifying nuclear activities and is helpful in areas where access and information are limited, such as nuclear facilities. This study aims to build training data using high-resolution KOMPSAT-3/3A satellite images to detect and identify key objects related to nuclear activities and facilities using a semantic segmentation algorithm. First, objects of interest, such as buildings, roads, and small objects, were selected, and the primary dataset was built by extracting them from the AI dataset provided by AIHub. In addition, to reflect the features of the area of interest (e.g., Yongbyon, Pyongsan), satellite images of the area were acquired, augmented, and annotated to construct an additional dataset (approximately 150,000). Finally, we conducted three stages of quality inspection to improve the accuracy of the training data. The training dataset of this study can be applied to semantic segmentation algorithms (e.g., U-Net) to detect objects of interest related to nuclear activities and facilities. Furthermore, it can be used for pixelbased object-of-interest change detection based on semantic segmentation results for multi-temporal images.

The swimming behavior of pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) in the offshore sea cage of the brass fishing net was observed and analyzed by imaging sonar techniques. The cultured fish spent most of the time swimming a circular path along the circular cage wall and continued to swim only clockwise direction without completely changing the swimming direction during the 23-hour observation time. In addition, changed swimming behaviors were divided into four categories: (a) the behavior of a large group temporarily swimming in the opposite (counter clockwise) direction, (b) the behavior of a small group temporarily swimming in a small circular path, (c) the behavior swimming small circular path in the center of the cage, and (d) the behavior of a large group swimming across the center of the cage. The maximum swimming speed of the cultured fish was from 3.5 to 3.8 TL/s, the mode was from 1.2 to 1.4 TL/s and the swimming speed during the day time was faster than at night time. It was confirmed the cultured fish swam not only on the surface but also near the bottom net of the cage during the day, but swam mainly at the upper part of the cage at night.