A disposal of radioactive wastes is one of the urgent issues in worldwide. Considering upcoming plans for decommissioning of nuclear power plants, this problem is unavoidable and should be discussed very thoughtfully before long. There are variety of methods to deal with radioactive wastes, including Incineration process, conventional gasification process and plasma gasification process and so on. Among them, plasma gasification process is in the limelight due to its ecofriendly features and very large volume reduction effects. So, lots of countries like Japan, Taiwan, Russia, Bulgaria are already utilizing commercial plasma melting facilities and researching their own characteristics & disposal abilities and so on. Within the scope of this paper, I would like to introduce other countries current status of plasma melting facilities, and reach the conclusion on the directions to go for realistic radioactive wastes treatment.

Currently, KHNP-CRI has developed 100 kW plasma torch melting facility to reduce the amount of radioactive waste in nuclear power plant. Plasma torch melting technology uses electric arc phenomena like lightning to melt the target material at a high temperature of about 1,600°C. The technology is applicable to treatment for various types of waste such as combustible, non-combustible and mixed wastes. The volume reduction ratio by the technology is respectively expected to be about 1/60 of combustible wastes and about 1/5 for non-combustible wastes. It is important to discharge the melt without problems in the melting technology. In general, molten slag has properties such as high viscosity and quick solidification. Because of the properties, when discharging into slag container, the final product is accumulated like a mountain. To improve this problem, there is three suggestions; 1) rotation of the slag container, 2) vibration of the slag container, and 3) heating of the slag container.