Coupled thermo-hydraulic-mechanical (THM) processes are essential for the long-term performance of deep geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste. In this study, a numerical sensitivity analysis was performed to analyze the effect of rock properties on THM responses after the execution of the heater test at the Kamaishi mine in Japan. The TOUGHFLAC simulator was applied for the numerical simulation assuming a continuum model for coupled THM analysis. The rock properties included in the sensitivity study were the Young’s modulus, permeability, thermal conductivity, and thermal expansion coefficients of crystalline rock, rock salt, and clay. The responses, i.e., temperature, water content, displacement, and stress, were measured at monitoring points in the buffer and near-field rock mass during the simulations. The thermal conductivity had an overarching impact on THM responses. The influence of Young’s modulus was evident in the mechanical behavior, whereas that of permeability was noticed through the change in the temperature and water content. The difference in the THM responses of the three rock type models implies the importance of the appropriate characterization of rock mass properties with regard to the performance assessment of the deep geological disposal of high-level radioactive waste.

Welding is one of representative manufacturing processes in the industrial field. Cryogenic storage containers are also manufactured through welding, and conversion to laser welding is issue in the field due to many advantages. Since welding causes thermal-elastic deformation, design considering distortion is required. Prediction of distortion through FEM is essential, but laser welding has difficulties in the field because there is no representative heat source model. The author presented the model that can cover various models using a multi-layer heat source model in previous studies. However the previous study has a limitation which is a welding heat source model must be derived after performing bead on plate welding. Thus this study was attempted to estimate the welding heat source parameters by comparing the shape of bead under various conditions. First, the difference between penetration shape and welding heat source parameters according to welding power was analyzed. The radius of the welding heat source increased according to the welding power, and the depth of the welding heat source also increased. The correlation between the penetration shape and the welding heat source parameter appears at a similar rate, however the follow-up research is necessary with more model data.

저층 침적 위험·유해물질(Hazardous and Noxious Substances)은 해저에 침적되는 위험·유해물질로 직접 및 광학 탐지 기법의 적용 이 어렵기 때문에 수중에서 효과적인 음향 탐지 기법 적용이 요구된다. 본 연구에서는 저층 침적 위험·유해물질인 클로로폼(Chloroform)을 이용한 후방산란신호 측정 실험을 통해 저층 침적 위험·유해물질 음향 탐지 가능성을 확인하였다. 제작된 아크릴 수조 내에 지점토를 이 용하여 웅덩이를 만든 후 Pan&Tilt를 이용하여 수평입사각을 90°에서 50°까지 0.5° 간격으로 변화시켜가며 클로로폼 유무에 따른 후방산란 신호 측정이 수행되었다. 송수신기를 단상태로 주파수 200 kHz, 신호길이 25 인 정현파 신호를 이용하여 송수신하였으며, 클로로폼 유 무에 따른 후방산란신호를 측정하였다. 클로로폼이 침적된 경우 수평입사각 약 80°이하에서 물과 클로로폼 경계면에서의 후방산란신호 수신준위가 작아지는 것이 확인되었다. 물과 클로로폼 경계면에서의 후방산란신호 측정된 결과를 통해 저층 침적 위험·유해물질 음향 탐 지 가능성을 확인하였다.

Polycarboxylic ether-based high-range water reducer (PCE) has been proposed to use due to the operational advantages of reduced water content and increased fluidity of cementitious mixtures. But the concern about using PCE can increase the mobility of radionuclides as well. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) showed that the PCE formulations increased radionuclide solubility in free solution. Solubility of U(VI), 239Pu, 241Am with the cementitious materials tested with 3:1 pulverized fuel Ash/Ordinary Portland Cement (PFA:OPC) and 9:1 Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag/OPC (GGBS:OPC) with PCE that increased at least one and, in some cases, more than three orders of magnitude (between 10-9 and 10-4 mol dm-3) for these radionuclides in the cement-equilibrated solution. It is possible that the relatively low molecular weight substances present in the PCE cement mixture increase the solubility of radionuclides. In addition, the organic substances that are easily miscible with water can contribute to increase the solubility. In this study, several radionuclides (Nb, Ni, Pd, Zr, and Sn) that may be present in intermediate and low-level waste (LIW) repositories were selected based on the half-life and the estimated dose accordingly, and the solubility tests were conducted with and without PCE in solution. To simulate the field condition of the underground repository, synthetic groundwater was prepared based on the recipe by the KAERI Underground Research Tunnel (KURT) DB-3 GW and used as a solvent. The solubility limiting solid phase (SLSP) of each radionuclide was determined using Geochemist’s WorkBench (GWB) model. The selected solid phases are Ni(OH)2, ZrSiO4, Nb2O5, Pd(metal), and SnO2, respectively, and the solubility experiments were conducted with 1.0wt% of PCE per total weight and 0.5 g / 250 ml of selected radionuclide’s SLSP for 90 days at room temperature (25°C). Compared with and without PCE presence in solution, the selected radionuclides also showed an increased solubility with the presence of water reducing agent like PCE. This results can be used to correctly estimate the mobility of target radionuclides with the presence of PCE in repository environments.

In high-level radioactive waste disposal, a high temperature is generated from the canister containing the waste in the engineered barrier, while groundwater flows into the buffer system from the host rock. The temperature increase and groundwater inflow result in the water phase change and saturation variation. Saturation change is related to the thermal conductivity of buffer material; hence the phase change and saturation strongly interact with the temperature evolution. The complex coupled behavior affects the stability of the whole disposal system, and the security of the repository is critical to human-being life. However, it is difficult to predict the long-term coupled behavior in the disposal system due to the considerable field-test scale, and therefore a numerical simulation is a suitable method having repeatability and cost-effectiveness. DECOVALEX is an international cooperating project for developing numerical methods and models for thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) interaction. DECOVALEX has a four-year cycle with various topics. At the current phase, Task C aims to simulate the full-scale emplacement (FE) experiment performed at Mont Terri underground rock laboratory. Nine research groups are participating in the task, and among them, KAERI simulates the experiment using OGS-FLAC. The simulator combines OpenGeoSys for TH simulation and FLAC3D for M simulation. Through the benchmark simulation, we verified OGS-FLAC for the two-phase flow analysis in the disposal system and finally modeled the FE experiment with a three-dimensional grid. We performed a simple sensitivity analysis to investigate the effect of input parameters on the two-phase flow system and confirmed that the compressibility and permeability affected the flow behavior. We also compared the simulation results to the field data and obtained well-matched results from a series of simulation.

Based on the results of a review for various precipitation methods phosphorylation (phosphate precipitation) of metal chlorides considered as a proper treatment method for recovering of the fission products in a molten salt. In previous precipitation tests, the powder of lithium phosphate (Li3PO4) added into LiCl-KCl molten salt containing metal chlorides as a precipitation agent. The reaction of metal chlorides containing actinides and rare earths to recover with lithium phosphate in a molten salt known as solid-liquid reaction. The powder of lithium phosphate disperse in a molten salt by stirring thoroughly in order to enhance the precipitation reaction. As a result, metal phosphates as the reaction products precipitate on the bottom of the vessel and cutting at the lower part of the salt ingot considered as one of the recovery method of the precipitates. Recently, the vacuum distillation of upper part of the salt proposed as another recovering method. Cutting method of precipitate at the lower part of the salt ingot would be difficult to handle the increased size of the salt ingot produced from the practical scale equipment. In this presentation, a new method for collecting the precipitates of phosphorylation reaction into a small vessel is introduced with test results in a molten salt containing uranium and rare earths such as Nd, Ce, and La. As the first step of a series of test lithium phosphate ingot was prepared by melting the powder at a temperature 1,300°C, and the ingot put into LiCl-KCl molten salt at 500°C for more than three hours to examine the shape of ingot to be deformed or not. The phosphorylation experiments using lithium phosphate ingots carried out to collect the metal phosphate precipitates and the test result of this new method was feasible.

The role of QR Code robots in smart logistics is great. Cognitive robots, such as logistics robots, were mostly used to adjust routes and search for peripheral sensors, cameras, and recognition signs attached to walls. However, recently, the ease of making QR Codes and the convenience of producing and attaching a lot of information within QR Codes have been raised, and many of these reasons have made QR Codes recognizable as visions and others. In addition, there have been cases in developed countries and Korea that control several of these robots at the same time and operate logistics factories smartly. This representative case is the KIVA robot in Amazon. KIVA robots are only operated inside Amazon, but information about them is not exposed to the outside world, so a variety of similar robots are developed and operated in several places around the world. They are applied in various fields such as education, medical, silver, military, parking, construction, marine, and agriculture, creating a variety of application robots. In this work, we are developing a robot that can recognize its current position, move and control in the directed direction through two-dimensional QR Codes with the same horizontal and vertical sides, and the error is to create a QR Code robot with accuracy to reach within 3mm. This paper focuses on indoor mobile robot position recognition and driving experiment using QR Code during the development of QR Code-aware indoor mobility robots.

This work provided a review of three techniques—(1) spectrochemical, (2) electrochemical, and (3) spectroelectrochemical– for molten salt medias. A spectroelectrochemical system was designed by utilizing this information. Here, we designed a spectroelectrochemical cell (SEC) and calibrated temperature controllers, and performed initial tests to explore the system’s capability limit. There were several issues and a redesign of the cell was accomplished. The modification of the design allowed us to assemble, align the system with the light sources, and successfully transferred the setup inside a controlled environment. A preliminary run was executed to obtain transmission and absorption background of NaCl-CaCl2 salt at 600°C. It shows that the quartz cuvette has high transmittance effects across all wavelengths and there were lower transmittance effects at the lower wavelength in the molten salt media. Despite a successful initial run, the quartz vessel was mated to the inner cavity of the SEC body. Moreover, there was shearing in the patch cord which resulted in damage to the fiber optic cable, deterioration of the SEC, corrosion in the connection of the cell body, and fiber optic damage. The next generation of the SEC should attach a high temperature fiber optic patch cords without introducing internal mechanical stress to the patch cord body. In addition, MACOR should be used as the cell body materials to prevent corrosion of the surface and avoid the mating issue and a use of an adapter from a manufacturer that combines the free beam to a fiber optic cable should be incorporated in the future design.

Aluminum alloys are extensively employed in several industries, such as automobile, aerospace, and architecture, owing to their high specific strength and electrical and thermal conductivities. However, to meet the rising industrial demands, aluminum alloys must be designed with both excellent mechanical and thermal properties. Computer-aided alloy design is emerging as a technique for developing novel alloys to overcome these trade-off properties. Thus, the development of a new experimental method for designing alloys with high-throughput confirmation is gaining focus. A new approach that rapidly manufactures aluminum alloys with different compositions is required in the alloy design process. This study proposes a combined approach to rapidly investigate the relationship between the microstructure and properties of aluminum alloys using a direct energy deposition system with a dual-nozzle metal 3D printing process. Two types of aluminum alloy powders (Al-4.99Si-1.05Cu-0.47Mg and Al-7Mg) are employed for the 3D printing-based combined method. Nine types of Al-Si-Cu-Mg alloys are manufactured using the combined method, and the relationship between their microstructures and properties is examined.

Geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste is considered the most effective method to isolate high-level radioactive waste from the biosphere. A high-level radioactive waste repository is designed to be placed at a deep depth and generally consists of canisters, buffer material, and host rock. In the disposal system, the heat from the canister occurs for millions of years due to the long half-life of the high-level radioactive waste, and the heat induces vaporization of groundwater in the buffer material. The resaturation process also occurs due to groundwater inflow from the host rock by the hydraulic head and capillarity. The saturation variation leads to the heat transfer and multi-phase flow in the buffer material, and thermal pressurization of groundwater due to the heat affects the effective stress change in the host rock. The stress change can make the porosity and permeability change in the flow system of the host rock, and the flow system affects the nuclide migration to the biosphere. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the complex thermo-hydro-mechanical-chemical (THMC) coupled behavior to secure the repository’s long-term safety. DECOVALEX is an international cooperating project to develop numerical methods and models for predicting the THMC interactions in the disposal systems through validation and comparison with test results. In Task C of DECOVALEX-2023, nine participating groups (BGR, BGE, CAS, ENSI, GRS, KAERI, LBNL, NWMO, Sandia) models the full-scale emplacement (FE) experiments at the Mont Terri underground rock laboratory and focus on understanding pore pressure development, heat transfer, thermal pressurization, vaporization and resaturation process in the disposal system. In the FE experiment, three heaters generated heat with constant power for five years at a 1:1 scale in the emplacement tunnel based on Nagra’s reference repository design. KAERI used OGS-FLAC3D for the numerical simulation, combining OpenGeoSys for TH simulation and FLAC3D for M simulation. We generated a full-scale three-dimensional numerical model with a dimension of 100 by 100 by 60 meters. The pressure and temperature distribution were well simulated with the host rock's anisotropy. Based on the capillarity, we observed vaporization and resaturation in the bentonite under the twophase flow system. We plan to compare the simulation results with the field data and investigate the effect of input parameters, including thermal conductivity and pore compressibility affecting the thermal and flow system.

필로티 공간은 일반적인 건축부재와 달리 부재가 외기와 접해 있고 실내에서 발생 가능한 화재와 가연물의 종류 및 배치 등이 달라 다양한 화재의 위험으로부터 노출되어 있다. 필로티 구조는 기둥으로만 이루어진 사방이 트인 구조로 인해 화 재가 발생할 경우 화재피해를 입은 기둥은 강도 및 강성이 저감되고 부재의 저항성이 저하되므로 단시간 안에 온도가 상승하여 구조체에 영향을 미친다. 이러한 문제점이 발생한다면 건축물 파손으로 인해 피난로를 차단당하여 많은 인명피해가 일어날 것 으로 사료된다. 본 연구에서는 다가구주택의 필로티 공간에서 화재 발생으로 인해 철근콘크리트 기둥에 미치는 화재영향을 확 인하고자, 기둥 국부화재실험을 통해 보강재에 따른 RC 기둥의 온도분포 및 파괴양상을 검토하였다.