Vitrification, one of the most promising solidification processes for various materials, has been applied to radioactive waste to improve its disposal stability and reduce its volume. Because the thermal decomposition of dry active waste (DAW) significantly reduces its volume, the volume reduction factor of DAW vitrification is high. The KHNP developed the optimal glass composition for the vitrification of DAW. Since vitrification offers a high-volume reduction ratio, it is expected that disposal costs could be greatly reduced by the use of such technology. The DG-2 glass composition was developed to vitrify DAW. During the maintenance of nuclear power plants, metals containing paper, clothes, and wood are generated. ZrO2 and HfO2 are generally considered to be network-formers in borosilicate-based glasses. In this study, a feasibility study of vitrification for DAW that contains metal particulates is conducted to understand the applicability of this process under various conditions. The physicochemical properties are characterized to assess the applicability of candidate glass compositions.

The balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorum A. DC.) is a medicinal and perennial flowering plant. Jangback is an important white-flower type balloon flower cultivar registered in South Korea, but no molecular marker was available to differentiate it from other white-flower lines. Therefore, we evaluated five P. grandiflorum white-flower lines and identified a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) derived from the chloroplast TrnL-F genomic sequence that specifically differentiated Jangback from the other four genotypes. Cultivar identification was achieved by detecting allelic variations of the SNP using amplification refractory mutation system-polymerase chain reaction (ARMS-PCR) analysis and high resolution melting (HRM) curve analysis. The present study describes a rapid and reliable method to authenticate the medicinally and economically valuable white-flower Jangback cultivar. Our results indicate that the plastid TrnL-F region provides for marker assisted identification and selection in intraspecific polymorphism studies, thereby the identified SNP marker provides a robust tool along with ARMS-PCR and HRM curve analysis for rapid and efficient identification of the medicinally valuable Jangback cultivar.