The effects of different plasma agent species ( CF4, N2) over the conductivity of CFX cathode material were identified. Both plasma treatments have surface etching effect, while the CF4 plasma treatment has C–F bond modification effect and the N2 plasma treatment has defluorination effect. The changes of surface chemical species and porosity along the plasma agent were elucidated. Moreover, the electrochemical properties of plasma-treated CFX confirmed the effects of plasma treatments. The charge-transfer resistance of plasma-treated CFX was maximum 60.3% reduced than the pristine CFX. The effects of surface chemical modification coupled with etching along the plasma gas agents were compared and identified with their reaction mechanisms.

Decommissioning plan of nuclear facilities require the radiological characterizations and the establishment of a decommissioning process that can ensure the safety and efficiency of the decommissioning workers. By utilizing the rapidly developed ICT technology, we have developed a technology that can acquire, analyze, and deliver information from the decommissioning work area to ensure the safety of decommissioning workers, optimize the decommissioning process, and actively respond to various decommissioning situations. The established a surveillance system that monitors nuclide inventory and radiation dose distribution at dismantling work area in real time and wireless transmits data for evaluation. Developed an evaluation program based on an evaluation model for optimizing the dismantling process by linking real-time measurement information. We developed a technology that can detect the location of dismantling workers in real time using stereovision cameras and artificial intelligence technology. The developed technology can be used for safety evaluation of dismantling workers and process optimization evaluation by linking the radionuclides inventory and dose distribution in dismantling work space of decommissioning nuclear power plant in the future.

Removing CO2 gas to address the global climate crisis is one of the most urgent agendas. To improve the CO2 adsorption ability of activated carbon, nitrogen plasma surface treatment was conducted. The effect of nitrogen plasma treatment on the surface chemistry and pore geometry of activated carbon was extensively analyzed. The porosity and surface groups of the activated carbon varied with the plasma treatment time. By plasma treatment for a few minutes, the microporosity and surface functionality could be simultaneously controlled. The changed microporosity and nitrogen groups affected the CO2 adsorption capacity and CO2 adsorption selectivity over N2. This simultaneous surface etching and functionalization effect could be achieved with a short operating time and low energy consumption.

Radiological characterization is important in decommissioning and dismantling of nuclear facilities, in order to assess the radioactivity concentration, classify the wastes, and secure workers’ safety. The Some components such as Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) in nuclear facilities has dose rate higher than Sv/hr, thus in-situ gamma spectroscopy systems suffer from a very high count rate which causes energy resolution degradation, photo-peak shift, and count loss by pile-up and dead-time. The system must be operated in a very high count rate, in order to measure spectra precisely and to quantify radionuclide contents. In order to apply in-situ measurement in high radiation dose rate environment, the sensor, front-end electronics, and data acquisition (DAQ) should be carefully selected and designed as well as precise design of collimators and radiation shield. In this paper, the components of the detector system were selected and performance was evaluated in a high count rate before design the collimator and shield. A LaBr3 coupled with a PMT having short decay time constant (16 nsec) was selected for high count rate application, and two different amplifiers (a conventional charge sensitive preamplifier with 50 usec decay time constant, and wide-band voltage amplifier) were tested. As DAQs, DT5781 (14 bit, 100 MS/s, CAEN) of Pulse Height Analysis (PHA) which is conventionally used signal processing method in the gamma spectroscopy, and DT5730 (14 bit, 500MS/s, CAEN) of Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD) which is similar to Charge to Digital Convertor (QDC) were used. The number of photons incident to the detector was varied by changing the detector-source distance with Certificate Radiation Material (CRM), and compared to the output count rate. The count rate capability, and energy resolution with different amplifier and DAQ was evaluated. Additionally, the performance of DAQs in extremely high count rate was evaluated with signal data generated by the emulator which can simulate the detector signal waveforms fed into the DAQ based on the measured spectrum.

The facile production of high-purity mesophase pitch has been a long-standing desire in various carbon industries. Recently, polymer additives for mesophase production have attracted much attention because of their convenience and efficiency. We propose polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as a strong candidate as an effective additive for mesophase production. The mesophase content and structural, chemical, and thermal properties of pitches obtained with different amounts of added PVDF are discussed. The influence of PVDF decomposition on mesophase formation is also discussed. We believe that this work provides an effective option for mesophase pitch production.

It is important to ensure worker’s safety from radiation hazard in decommissioning site. Real-time tracking of worker’s location is one of the factors necessary to detect radiation hazard in advance. In this study, the integrated algorithm for worker tracking has been developed to ensure the safety of workers. There are three essential techniques needed to track worker’s location, which are object detection, object tracking, and estimating location (stereo vision). Above all, object detection performance is most important factor in this study because the performance of tracking and estimating location is depended on worker detection level. YOLO (You Only Look Once version 5) model capable of real-time object detection was applied for worker detection. Among the various YOLO models, a model specialized for person detection was considered to maximize performance. This model showed good performance for distinguishing and detecting workers in various occlusion situations that are difficult to detect correctly. Deep SORT (Simple Online and Realtime Tracking) algorithm which uses deep learning technique has been considered for object tracking. Deep SORT is an algorithm that supplements the existing SORT method by utilizing the appearance information based on deep learning. It showed good tracking performance in the various occlusion situations. The last step is to estimate worker’s location (x-y-z coordinates). The stereo vision technique has been considered to estimate location. It predicts xyz location using two images obtained from stereo camera like human eyes. Two images are obtained from stereo camera and these images are rectified based on camera calibration information in the integrated algorithm. And then workers are detected from the two rectified images and the Deep SORT tracks workers based on worker’s position and appearance between previous frames and current frames. Two points of workers having same ID in two rectified images give xzy information by calculating depth estimation of stereo vision. The integrated algorithm developed in this study showed sufficient possibility to track workers in real time. It also showed fast speed to enable real-time application, showing about 0.08 sec per two frames to detect workers on a laptop with high-performance GPU (RTX 3080 laptop version). Therefore, it is expected that this algorithm can be sufficiently used to track workers in real decommissioning site by performing additional parameter optimization.

Pyroprocessing is a promising technology for managing spent nuclear fuel. The nuclear material accounting of feed material is a challenging issue in safeguarding pyroprocessing facilities. The input material in pyroprocessing is in a solid-state, unlike the solution state in an input accountability tank used in conventional wet-type reprocessing. To reduce the uncertainty of the input material accounting, a double-stage homogenization process is proposed in considering the process throughput, remote controllability, and remote maintenance of an engineering-scale pyroprocessing facility. This study tests two types of mixing equipment in the proposed double-stage homogenization process using surrogate materials. The expected heterogeneity and accounting uncertainty of Pu are calculated based on the surrogate test results. The heterogeneity of Pu was 0.584% obtained from Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) spent fuel of 59 WGd/tU when the relative standard deviation of the mass ratio, tested from the surrogate powder, is 1%. The uncertainty of the Pu accounting can be lower than 1% when the uncertainty of the spent fuel mass charged into the first mixers is 2%, and the uncertainty of the first sampling mass is 5%.

한국원자력연구원은 IAEA에서 권고하고 있는 안전조치기반설계(SBD)에 입각하여 파이로 안전조치 기술을 개발하고 있다. 한국원자력연구원은 파이로 안전조치접근방안 개발을 위한 IAEA 회원국지원프로그램(MSSP)을 수행하였다. IAEA 회원국 지원프로그램을 통하여 기준파이로시설(REPF) 개념을 설계하고, 이 시설에 대한 안전조치시스템을 개발하였다. 최근에 기 준파이로시설은 용량이 증대된 REPF+로 업데이트 되고 있다. 핵물질계량관리시스템 성능평가를 위하여 전산코드 PYMUS 를 개발하였으며, PYMUS는 전용탐지획률 통계평가 방안을 포함하여 업그레이드하고 있다. 파이로 입력물질 계량을 위한 비파괴분석장비로 ASNC가 개발되고 있으며, 파이로 출력물질인 U/TRU 잉곳을 계량하기위한 비파괴분석장비로 HIPAI가 개발되고 있다. 또한 컴프톤 억제 감마선분광기술, LIBS 기술, 균질화 공정의 샘플링 오차에 대한 평가도 진행 중이다. 이러 한 노력들은 국내에서 선진핵주기기술 실현에 크게 기여할 것이다.