The underground environment has an advantage to minimize the external influences because it is isolated space with surrounded rock medium. Therefore, underground rock has been used recently as the target for a disposal system of spent fuel with high-level radioactive. The disposal system mainly consists of natural barrier (i.e., surrounded rock medium) and engineered barrier (i.e., concrete lining, plug, backfill, canister, and buffer). In particular, the engineered barrier is important for long-term storage because it has to preferentially block the leakage of radioactive nuclide. Non-destructive technologies (NDT) have been utilized to monitor the state of disposal system for considering the limitation in deep depth conditions such as limited environment for direct damage inspection. Acoustic emission (AE) monitoring technique is an effective method to monitor the damage (crack) magnitude, history (i.e., crack evolution), and location using high-frequency elastic waves. To apply the AE monitoring method in the disposal system, the characteristics of damaged materials should be considered. The concrete lining has multi-failure behavior (i.e., brittle and ductile) resulted from composition as cement and reinforcing steel bar. Therefore, it important to investigate the AE characteristics according to the failure level of reinforced concrete for damage monitoring of the disposal systems. In this study, the four-point bending tests were carried out to measure the AE signals from the cracking of reinforce concrete specimens in laboratory. The test specimens were prepared with different strength. After the experiment, the AE characteristics were analyzed using the AE parameters with loading and failure state in the curve of time-stress. This study will be helpful for damage monitoring using AE technique in the field of high-level radioactive disposal system.

The backfill close the deep geological disposal system by filling the disposal tunnel and the connecting tunnel after the installation of buffer in the disposal hole. SKB and Posiva have established and designed the safety function of the backfill for the common goal of the deep geological disposal system. The safety function of backfill material has been set hydraulic conductivity of less than 10−10 m·s−1, a swelling pressure of 0.2 MPa, a compressive modulus of 10 MPa or a buffer density of 1,950 kg·m−3 or more, and freezing resistance. For the selection of the optimum backfill material, SKB and Posiva developed the concept of the backfill and evaluated the candidate that satisfies the requirements in four steps. In the first step, the performance and function that the backfill material should have were conceptualized. For the second step, laboratory tests and in-depth analysis of the candidate material properties were conducted. At this step, the focus has been on testing with the concept of the block method, using key candidate materials. In step 3, laboratory and large-scale experiments were performed to test engineering feasibility. In addition, design specifications for backfill materials were set based on site conditions, installation methods, and short- and long-term functions of materials. In Korea, it is only now in the step of selecting the concepts of the safety function. Therefore, it is necessary to benchmark the development process based on the previous studies of SKB and Posiva. In this study, candidate materials, experimental methods, and results were analyzed. As a result, the research steps and conditions for the selection of the optimum backfill material were reviewed. Using this study, the research steps of domestic backfill was suggested to develop within a short time for the Korean deep geological disposal system.