Domestic commercial low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste storage containers are manufactured using 1.2 mm thick cold-rolled steel sheets, and the outer surface is coated with a thin layer of primer of 10~36 μm. However, the outer surface of the primer of the container may be damaged due to physical friction, such as acceleration, resonance, and vibration during transportation. As a result, exposed steel surfaces undergo accelerated corrosion, reducing the overall durability of the container. The integrity of storage containers is directly related to the safety of workers. Therefore, the development of storage containers with enhanced durability is necessary. This paper provides an analysis of mechanical properties related to the durability of WC (tungsten carbide)-based coating materials for developing low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste storage containers. Three different WC-based coating specimens with varied composition ratios were prepared using HVOF (high-velocity oxy-fuel) technique. These different specimens (namely WC-85, WC-73, and WC-66) were uniformly deposited on cold-rolled steel surfaces ensuring a constant thickness of 250 μm. In this work, the mechanical properties of the three different WCbased coaitng materials evaluated from the viewpoints of microstructure, hardness, adheision force between substrate and coating material, and wear resistance. The cross-sectional SEM-EDS (Scanning Electron Microscope-Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy) images revealed that elements W (tungsten), C (carbon), Ni (nickel), and Cr (chromium) were uniformly distributed within the each coating layers which was approximately 250 μm thick. The average hardness values of HWC-85 and HWC-73 were found to be 1,091 Hv (Vickers Hardness) and 1,083 Hv, respectively, while the HWC-66 exhibited relatively lower hardness value of 883 Hv. This indicates that a higher WC content results in increased hardness. Adhesion force between and substrates and coating materials exceeded 60 MPa for all specimens, however, there were no significant differences observed based on the tungsten carbide content. Furthermore, a taber-type abrasion tester was used for conducting abrasion resistance tests under specific conditions including an H-18 load weight at 1,000 g with rotational speed set at 60 RPM. The abrasion resistance tests were performed under ambient temperatures (RT: 23±2°C) as well as relative humidity levels (RH: 50±10%). Currently, the ongoing abrasion resistance tests will include some results in this study.

This study focuses on the development of coatings designed for storage containers used in the management of radioactive waste. The primary objective is to enhance the shielding performance of these containers against either gamma or neutron radiation. Shielding against these types of radiation is essential to ensure the safety of personnel and the environment. In this study, tungsten and boron cabide coating specimens were manufactured using the HVOF (High-Velocity Oxy Fuel) technuqe. These coatings act as an additional layer of protection for the storage containers, effectively absorbing and attenuating gamma and neutron radiation. The fabricated tungsten and boron carbide coating specimens were evaluated using two different testing methods. The first experiment evaluates the effectiveness of a radiation shielding coating on cold-rolled steel surfaces, achieved by applying a mixture of WC (Tungsten Carbide) powders. WC-based coating specimens, featuring different ratios, were prepared and preliminarily assessed for their radiation shielding capabilities. In the gamma-ray shielding test, Cs-137 was utilized as the radiation source. The coating thickness remained constant at 250 μm. Based on the test results, the attenuation ratio and shielding rate for each coated specimen were calculated. It was observed that the gammaray shielding rate exhibited relatively higher shielding performance as the WC content increased. This observation aligns with our findings from the gamma-ray shielding test and underscores the potential benefits of increasing the tungsten content in the coating. In the second experiment, a neutron shielding material was created by applying a 100 μm-thick layer of B4C (Boron Carbide) onto 316SS. The thermal neutron (AmBe) shielding test results demonstrated an approximate shielding rate of 27%. The thermal neutron shielding rate was confirmed to exceed 99.9% in the 1.5 cm thick SiC+B4C bulk plate. This indicates a significant reduction in required volume. This study establishes that these coatings enhance the gamma-ray and neutron shielding effectiveness of storage containers designed for managing radioactive waste. In the future, we plan to conduct a comparative evaluation of the radiation shielding properties to optimize the coating conditions and ensure optimal shielding effectiveness.

In Korea, most temporary storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel are nearing saturation. As an alternative to this, the 2nd basic plan for high-level radioactive waste management specified the operation plan of dry interim storage facility. Meanwhile, the NSSC No. 2021-19 stipulates that it is necessary to evaluate the possibility and potential effect of accident before operating interim storage facility. Therefore, this study analyzed the categories of accident scenarios that may occur in dry storage facility as part of prior research on this. We investigated the case of categorization of dry storage facility accident scenarios of IAEA, NRC, KAREI, and KINS. The IAEA presented accident scenarios that could occur in on-site dry storage facility operated with silo and cask method. NRC has classified accident scenarios in dry storage facility and estimated the probability of accidents for each. KAERI and KINS selected major accident scenarios and analyzed the processes for each, in preparation for the introduction of dry storage facility in Korea in the future. Overall, a total of 10 accident scenarios were considered, and the scenarios considered by each institution were different. Among 10 scenarios, cask drop and aircraft collision were included in the categorization of most institutions. The results of this study can be used as basic data for cataloging accidents subject to safety evaluation when introducing dry interim storage facility in Korea in the future.

There are many types of foam molding methods. The most commonly used methods are the pressure foaming method, in which foam resin is mixed with a foaming agent at high temperature and high pressure, and the normal pressure foaming method, which foams at high temperature without pressure. The polymer resins used for foaming have different viscosities. For foaming under normal pressure, they need to be designed and analyzed for optimal foaming conditions, to obtain resins with low melt-viscosity or a narrow optimal viscosity range. This study investigated how changes in viscosity, molding temperature, and cross-link foaming conditions affected the characteristics of the molded foam, prepared by blending rubber polymer with biodegradable resin. The morphologies of cross sections and the cell structures of the normal pressure foam were investigated by SEM analysis. Properties were also studied according to cross-link/foaming conditions and torque. Also, the correlation between foaming characteristics was studied by analyzing tensile strength and elongation, which are mechanical properties of foaming composites.

In Korea, the construction of dry storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel is being promoted through the 2nd basic plan for high-level radioactive waste management. When operating dry storage facilities, exposure dose assessment for workers should be performed, and for this, exposure scenarios based on work procedures should be derived prior. However, the dry storage method has not yet been sufficiently established in Korea, so the work procedure has not been established. Therefore, research is needed to apply it domestically based on the analysis of spent nuclear fuel management methods in major overseas leading countries. In this study, the procedure for receiving and storing spent nuclear fuel in a concrete overpack-based storage facility was analyzed. Among the various spent nuclear fuel management systems, the metal overpack-based HI-STAR 100 system and the concrete overpackbased HI-STORM 100 system are quite common methods in the United States. Therefore, in this study, work procedures were analyzed based on each final safety analysis report. First, the HI-STAR 100 overpack enters the facility and is placed in the transfer area. Remove the impact limiter of the overpack and install the alignment device on the top of the overpack. Place the HI-TRAC, an on-site transfer device, on top of the alignment unit and remove the lids of the two devices to insert the canister into the HI-TRAC. When the canister transfer is complete, reseat the lid to seal it, and disconnect the HI-TRAC from the HI-STAR 100. Raise the canister-loaded HI-TRAC over the alignment device on the top of the HI-STORM 100 overpack and remove the lids of the two devices that are in contact. Insert the canister into the HI-STORM 100 and reseat the lid. The HI-STORM 100 loaded with spent nuclear fuel is transferred to the designated storage area. In this study, the procedure for receiving and storing spent nuclear fuel in a concrete overpack-based storage facility was analyzed. The main procedure was the transfer of canisters between overpacks, and it was confirmed that HI-TRAC was used in the work procedure. The results of this study can be used as basic data for evaluating the exposure dose of operating workers for the construction of dry storage facilities in Korea.

After Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in 2011, Concerns about accident of spent fuel pool increase. In Korea, the time of saturation of spent fuel pool is coming, but regulatory measures and safety evaluation are insufficient when occurring spent fuel pool accident. Thus, it is necessary to review of spent fuel pool accident in foreign countries to establish regulatory measures and safety evaluation of spent fuel pool accident suitable for domestic spent fuel pool. Therefore, we reviewed spent fuel pool accident that occurred at Fukushima Unit 4, SONGS Unit 2 and PAKS. In Japan, spent fuel pool accident occurred at Fukushima NPP in 2011. Tsunami was cause of the accident. Station Black Out occurred at Fukushima NPP and Emergency Diesel Generator lost their functions due to Tsunami. As a result, Loss of cooling happened in spent fuel pool at Fukushima NPP. For Unit 4, wall of spent fuel pool in Unit 4 was damaged due to hydrogen explosive, so loss of coolant in spent fuel pool of Unit 4 occurred. After the accident, the temperature of spent fuel pool increases to 75°C, but there was no damage to the spent fuel. In USA, spent fuel pool accident occurred at SONGS Unit 2 in 2013. The debris of nearby ocean is cause of the accident. The debris entered the system through a damaged Salt Water Cooling pump suction strainer. The debris obstructed flow through the Component Cooling Water heat exchanger and operation of Salt Water Cooling. The maximum spent fuel pool temperature during this event was 25.6°C. It was a value that satisfied the technical specifications of the SONGS NPP. In Ukraine, spent fuel pool accident occurred at PAKS in 2003. Unintentionally opened valve of cleaning tank is cause of the accident. Loss of coolant occurred in spent fuel pool of PAKS. Due to loss of coolant, spent fuels were exposed to the vapor state atmosphere, and oxidation occurred in the cladding tube of the spent fuel that rose to 1,400°C. In this study, Review of spent fuel pool accident in major foreign countries was conducted as basic studies for establishing regulatory measures and safety evaluation of spent fuel pool in Korea. Causes of each accident were different by structure of spent fuel pools. Result of this study will be contributed to establish safety measures of spent fuel pool accident suitable for domestic spent fuel pool facility.

APro, a modularized process-based total system performance assessment framework, was developed at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) to simulate radionuclide transport considering coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanicalchemical processes occurring in a geological disposal system. For reactive transport simulation considering geochemical reactions, COMSOL and PHREEQC are coupled with MATLAB in APro using an operator splitting scheme. Conventionally, coupling is performed within a MATLAB interface so that COMSOL stops the calculation to deliver the solution to PHREEQC and restarts to continue the simulation after receiving the solution from PHREEQC at every time step. This is inefficient when the solution is frequently interchanged because restarting the simulation in COMSOL requires an unnecessary setup process. To overcome this issue, a coupling scheme that calls PHREEQC inside COMSOL was developed. In this technique, PHREEQC is called through the “MATLAB function” feature, and PHREEQC results are updated using the COMSOL “Pointwise Constraint” feature. For the one-dimensional advection-reaction-dispersion problem, the proposed coupling technique was verified by comparison with the conventional coupling technique, and it improved the computation time for all test cases. Specifically, the more frequent the link between COMSOL and PHREEQC, the more pronounced was the performance improvement using the proposed technique.

The slaughter of livestock is inevitably required to obtain meat products from livestock. Since slaughter means pain and death for animals, reducing the pain and distress of animals during slaughter is very important from a perspective of animal welfare based on the principle of respect for life. Generally, two stunning methods, CO2 stunning and electrical stunning, are used for slaughter. When the carotid arteries of the lungs are cut off for bleeding, the bronchial tubes are also severed. To determine the degree of blood inflow into the lungs through the severed bronchial tubes, the prevalence rates of pulmonary diseases and pulmonary congestion in slaughtered pigs were analyzed. In this study, the prevalence of pneumonia was 24.9% in Slaughterhouse A using the gas method, but it was decreased by about 10% to 15.7% and 12.6%, respectively, in Slaughterhouses B and C using the electric method. On the other hand, the prevalence of pulmonary congestion in Slaughterhouses A, B, and C was 4.24%, 14.10% and 16.40%, respectively. In other words, the prevalence of pulmonary congestion was higher by about 10% in the groups of pigs slaughtered by the electric method (Slaughterhouses B and C) than in the group of pigs slaughtered by the gas method (Slaughterhouse A). These results indicate that blood inflow into the pulmonary alveoli led to a diagnosis of pulmonary congestion instead of pneumonia in some pigs with pneumonia. In short, it was found that about 10% of pigs stunned by the electric method were not in a state of complete unconsciousness but in a partially conscious state during slaughter. It is suggested that slaughterhouses should be equipped with gas stunning equipment instead of applying the electric method due to lower costs.

APro, a modularized framework of the process-based total system performance assessment, has been developed by KAERI to simulate the radionuclide transport in geological disposal system considering multi-physics phenomena. However, the target problem including more than 10,000 boreholes and over 100,000 years of simulation time is computationally challenging to deal with numerical solvers provided by COMSOL Multiphysics constituting APro. To alleviate the computational burden, machine learning (ML) techniques have been studied to develop a surrogate model replacing the heavy computation part. In recent studies, attempts have been made to integrate the knowledge of physics and numerical methods into the ML model for partial differential equations (PDEs). Unlike conventional ML approaches solely relying on data-driven method, the integration can help to make the ML model more specialized for solving PDEs. The hybrid neural network (NN) solver method is one of the strategies to develop more efficient PDE solver by interleaving NN with numerical solvers like finite element method (FEM). The hybrid NN model on the premise of numerical solver is easier to train and more stable than the purely data-driven model. For example, one previous study has used the hybrid NN model as a corrector for an incomplete numerical solver for the advection-diffusion problem. In every time step of simulation, NN corrects the error of incomplete solution obtained by a relaxed numerical solver with coarse meshing. The simulation in the next time step starts from the corrected solution, so NN interacts with the numerical solver iteratively. If the corrector is successfully trained, the incomplete but fast solver with corrector can provide reliable results comparable to the original massive solver. This study adopts the hybrid concept to develop a surrogate model for the near-field region, which is the heavy computation part in the simulation of geological disposal system. Various incomplete models such as coarse meshing or emptying the borehole domain are studied to construct a hybrid NN solver. This study also covers how to embed the hybrid NN in COMSOL Multiphysics to train and use it during the simulation.

The Republic of Korea is expected to participate in the denuclearization verification activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in case any neighboring countries declared denuclearization. In this study, samples for the verification of nuclear activities in undeclared areas were selected for the denuclearization of neighboring countries, and the appropriateness of the procedures was considered. If a country with nuclear weapons declares denuclearization, it must be accompanied by the IAEA’s verification regarding nuclear materials and weapons in the declared and undeclared areas. The analysis of the process samples or on-site environmental samples and the verification of undeclared nuclear facilities and materials aid in uncovering any evidence of concealment of nuclear activity in undeclared areas. Therefore, a methodology was established for effective sampling and analysis in accordance with proper procedures. Preparations for sampling in undeclared areas were undertaken for various potential scenarios, such as, the establishment of zones according to radiation dose, methods of supplying electricity, wireless communication networks, targets of sampling according to characteristics of nuclides, manned sampling method, and unmanned sampling method. Through this, procedures were established for pre- and post-site settings in preparation for hazards and limiting factors at nuclear inspection sites.

The 17th APEC Future Education Forum (AFEF) and the 19th International ALCoB Conference were held from 28 September (Tuesday) to 1 October (Friday) in a virtual manner. The annual forum and conference serve as an invaluable opportunity to discuss future directions of education and human resources development in the Asia-Pacific region. Since 2005, the forum and conference have served their role as the largest and longest thematic meeting in the APEC Human Resources Development Working Group (HRDWG). The 2021 forum and conference have gathered 780 participants from 20 APEC member economies, guest economies and international institutions. Under the theme “Strengthening lifelong competencies and skills development for individuals’ career, education, training, and life cycles”, the forum and conference reflected the current educational agenda from 21 APEC member economies and other international organizations such as G20, UNESCO. As a way forward, the forum and conference speakers recommend APEC to 1) consider individual and industrial needs for curriculum development, 2) expand lifelong learning policies and practices at both domestic and international level and 3) develop a public-private partnership to prepare its future talents with adequate competencies. This review explains the 17th AFEF and the 19th International ALCoB Conference background, summary and outcomes. The review also briefs on collective actions member economies can take as future steps to continue the forum and conference discussions.

본 연구는 원통형 종이포트 토마토 육묘시 Diniconazole의 처리방법이 도장억제 및 근권발달에 미치는 영향을 검토하기 위하여 수행되었다. 그 결과, 엽면적, LAR, 초장, 충실도, 생체중, RGR 및 R/S 에서 시험구간 유의한 차이를 보였다. 동일한 농도를 처리했을 경우, 근권부와 지상부의 흡수도 차이로 인해 저면관수가 엽면살포에 비해 도장억제에 효과적이었다. 저면관수는 엽면시비의 10분의 1의 농도만으로도, 20~30%정도의 동일한 도장억제 효과를 얻을 수 있었다. 디니코나졸 처리에의한 근권부 반응이 흥미로웠는데, 저면관수시 총근장, 근권부피, 평균 근경 및 근단수가 증가하였다. 특히, 0.3mm 이하의 초미세근이 감소하고 0.3~0.6mm의 세근이 증가하였다. 따라서 원통형 종이포트 육묘시 저면관수를 하는 것이 기존 엽면시비에 비해 사용량이 적으면서도 도장억제 및 근권부 활착률을 높힐 수 있을 것으로 판단된다.

The vehicle routing problem is one of the vibrant research problems for half a century. Many studies have extensively studied the vehicle routing problem in order to deal with practical decision-making issues in logistics. However, developments of new logistics strategies have inevitably required investigations on solution methods for solving the problem because of computational complexity and inherent constraints in the problem. For this reason, this paper suggests a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm for a variant of vehicle routing problem introduced by a previous study. The vehicle routing problem is a multi-depot and multi-trip vehicle routing problem with multiple heterogeneous vehicles restricted by the maximum permitted weight and the number of compartments. The SA algorithm generates an initial solution through a greedy-type algorithm and improves it using an enhanced SA procedure with three local search methods. A series of computational experiments are performed to evaluate the performance of the heuristic and several managerial findings are further discussed through scenario analyses. Experiment results show that the proposed SA algorithm can obtain good solutions within a reasonable computation time and scenario analyses show that a transportation system visiting non-dedicated factories shows better performance in truck management in terms of the numbers of vehicles used and trips for serving customer orders than another system visiting only dedicated factories.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published ISO 9001 Quality Management System (QMS)-Requirements in 1987 and has revised four times since then. ISO 9001:2015 is the latest edition. This latest edition has two most noticeable changes. The first major change of new edition focuses on performance with an emphasis on Risk-Based Thinking (RBT) to enhance the process approach. The new edition consists of ten clauses whose first three clauses are largely same as older edition but risks are clearly stated and stressed in last seven clauses, emphasizing on Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle at all levels in the organization. The second major change is that the new edition has the same overall structure as other ISO management system standards known as High Level Structure (HLS) with Annex SL. The companies obtained the certificate of new ISO 9001:2015 QMS by September 15, 2018 in order to maintain as an ISO QMS registered firm. In this article we collected transition audit data from more than 100 companies that registered ISO 9001:2015 QMS for recent three years. We performed a statistical analysis to disclose the relationships between the characteristics of companies and the minor nonconformities found in ISO 9001:2015 requirements during transition audit processes. We also aim to interpret the findings and deduce the implications of the statistical results.