As a series of basic research to draw the pilot design measures for developing the habitat apparatus of Sulculus diversicolor supertexta inhabiting the coastal area of Jeju island, this study conducted a water tank experiment to understand the habitat marine environment of Sulculus diversicolor supertexta and the preference of habitat space focusing on the research fisheries performing the discharge of marine products. In the composition degree of marine algae in both fisheries, Donggwi-ri showed the highest gulfweed (79.3%) as brown algae and there were some coralline algae (17.2%) as red algae. Hansu-ri yielded the highest gulfweed (48.1%) as brown algae, which was followed by sea lettuce (10.4%) as green algae. In the preference of habitat space, the shelter angles 40° showed the highest adhesion as number of 82.9, which was followed by 60° and 70° as 69.2 and 68.2 respectively (P<0.05) by reviewing the environmental characteristics of habit of Salculus diversicolor supertexta in the coastal fishery of Jeju Island, when considering the adhesion rate in each of five shelters with different angles. In the future, there should be continuous research and monitoring for designing the fish shelters suitable for the coastal fisheries of Jeju island, and it would be also necessary to add the field-centered sustainable concrete research.

Forest fires produce various particulate organic matters (POMs) derived from the incomplete combution process of biomass. The POMs deposited in soil and sediments can affect the physicochemical properties of the subsurface environments. This study investigated the sorption and transport behavior of cesium (Cs) in soil-groundwater environment after wildfire. Soil samples were collected at two locations (GS1 & GS2) in Gangwon Province, Korea, at different depths (~5, ~20, and ~40 cm). The sampling site, where a large-scale forest fire occurred in 2017, was damaged almost 252 ha of forest. The soil characteristics were determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), total organic carbon (TOC) analysis and organic petrography, and batch and fixed-bed column experiments were performed to evaluate the Cs uptake and retardation. The XRD patterns of the soils indicated that the mineral compositions of soils were quartz, feldspars (e.g., orthoclase & albite) with minor muscovite/illite. Quartz and feldspars were abundant in all studied soils, and GS2 sample contained higher feldspars and phyllosilicate minerals than the GS1. The TOC contents were high (7–8wt%) in the topsoils, decreasing with depth. The SEM and organic petrographic analyses showed that various organic carbon particles such as textinite, ulminite, fusinite (charcoal) and char existed. Presence of charcoal and char is the evidence of wildfires, even though their amount was few. Batch sorption experiments revealed that the Kd value decreased non-linearly as the Cs concentrations increased, and the sorption isotherms were fitted well with the Freundlich model. The Kd values of each soil were much greater in topsoils compared to subsoils at all experimental Cs concentrations. In particular, the GS1 topsoil had higher sorption capacity for cesium than GS2 subsoils, although it had low phyllosilicate mineral contents with realtively rich organic matter. The breakthrough curve of column experiments with high concentration (C0 ≈ 1×105 μg·L−1) also exhibited remarkable Cs retardation phenomena in topsoils. Their retardation factors (Rf,Cs) were max. 4 times greater than those of subsoils, showing Rf,Cs ≈ 43 to 45 for topsoils. At low concentration (C0 ≈ 1×104 μg·L−1), the Rf,Cs of topsoils (≈ 284 to 374) was slightly greater than that of subsoils (≈ 270 to 271). These results imply that POMs caused by wildfires can play important role on the Cs sorption and transport in the subsurface environments.

In nuclear power plants and nuclear facilities, radioactive waste containing hazardous substances (Mixed waste) is continuously generated due to research such as radiochemical study and nuclide analysis. In addition, radioactive waste including heavy metals and asbestos is generated during the dismantling process of nuclear power plants. Mixed wastes have both radiation hazards and chemical hazards, and there’s a possibility of synergistic effects generation. However, in most countries except the United States, there are no regulatory standards for the chemical hazards of mixed waste. The regulations applicable to mixed waste in Korea include the Nuclear Safety Act and the Waste Management Act. The Nuclear Safety Act prohibits the acceptance of hazardous radioactive waste in disposal facilities, but there is no definition or characteristic identification procedure for “hazardous.” The Waste Management Act also does not state the regulation for radioactive waste. In the Gyeongju disposal facility in Korea, the leachate in the disposal facility is expected to be a groundwater saturated with concrete and is expected to irradiated by radioactive waste. On the other hands, most of the non-radioactive waste landfill facilities are built on the surface, and the leachate is expected to be rainwater that reacts with the soil. Due to the differences in leaching environments, there’s a potential to overestimate or underestimate the leaching properties of hazardous substances if the standard leaching test is applied. To show for this, a leaching test simulating disposal facility’s environment were applied to sample waste containing heavy metals. The leaching solution was groundwater collected from the area near the Gyeongju disposal facility, which is then saturated with concrete and adjusted to pH 12.5. In addition, gamma-ray irradiation was conducted during the leaching test to observe changes in the leaching behavior of heavy metals in the actual radioactive waste disposal environment. As a result, lead showed significantly increased leaching compared to the standard test method, and cadmium was not detected in all experimental conditions except heavy irradiation. This study suggested that regulations on the hazardous of mixed waste should be settled, which should be established in sufficient consideration of the types and characteristics of substances contained in the waste.

Mechanism and kinetics of Rhenium complexes as a surrogate of Technetium-99 (99Tc) is worthy of study from radioactive waste safe disposal perspective. Re(IV)-EDTA was synthesized via the reduction of Re(VII) with Sn(II) in the presence of Ethylenediaminetetracetic acid (EDTA). The Re(IV)-EDTA was then degraded by H2O2 (7–30%) at pH of 3–11 in ionic strength I = 0–2 M solution. The Re- EDTA was observed to degrade more rapidly at pH of ≤ 3–4 than one of ≥ 10–11 and remained stable at pH = 7–9. At a low acidic pH, the complex degradation process was facilitated by protonation and corresponded to the exponential model (y = k. e–nt). In contrast, at an alkaline pH, the degradation was facilitated OH– complexation with Re(IV) and corresponded to a linear model (y = –mt + C). Complex degradation followed the zero-order rate kinetics for the H+ and Re-EDTA parameters, apart from a pH of 3, for which degradation was a better fit to first order kinetics. A higher Re(IV)-EDTA stability at a pH of 7–9 demonstrated that Re(IV)-EDTA (or 99Tc(IV)-EDTA) tends to be more persistent in natural environmental conditions.

The safety assessment of a geological disposal system is performed over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, during which the activity of radionuclides in spent nuclear fuel decreases to natural radioactivity levels. During this period, the biosphere also experiences the long-term evolution of the surface environment including climate, terrain, and ecosystem changes. These changes cause changes in the water balance, which in turn change the pathways of radionuclides in the subsurface. Therefore, it is essential to consider these long-term changes in the surface environment for a reasonable biosphere safety assessment. For this purpose, this study developed the biosphere assessment module considering the long-term evolution of the surface environment, as a sub-module of APro (Adaptive process-based total system performance assessment framework). As a preceding study, the biosphere assessment module was previously developed using COMSOL for hydraulic and radionuclide transport processes, to simulate the pathway of radionuclides traveling from the shallow aquifer to the surface water body and soil. To consider the long-term evolution of the surface environment, the previous module needed to be improved to apply different water balances as boundary conditions of the module at each snapshot, which is a sub-time period divided based on the surface evolution data. To this end, this study utilized SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) which calculates the water balance using the surface environmental data including climate, terrain, land cover, and soil type. Conceptually, SWAT calculated annual water balance considering surface environmental changes, and certain components (i.e., groundwater recharge and hydraulic head of water bodies) of water balance were transferred to COMSOL as external data to simulate the pathway of radionuclide transport and spatio-temporal variability of radionuclides. At the current stage, the biosphere computational module has been developed to correspond to its conceptual model, and we plan to further test the applicability of the module using different surface environmental data.

Domain decomposition method (DDM) has been widely employed for the numerical analysis of large-scale problems due to its applicability to parallel computing. DDM divides the modeling domain into a set of subdomains and obtains the entire solution iteratively until the values of each subdomain which are shared with other subdomains, such as boundary values, are converged. Therefore, in general, DDM is a memory-efficient iterative algorithm with inherent parallelism on the geometric level. APro, the process-based total system performance assessment model, aims for simulating the radionuclide transport considering coupled multi-physics phenomena occurring in large-scale geological disposal system, which are inevitably accompanied by huge memory burden. Therefore, DDM is applicable for the large-scale problem of APro and its performance in parallel computing needs to be examined. The DDM solvers provided by COMSOL which constitute APro can be classified into two methods. One is the overlapping Schwarz method that each subdomain overlaps its neighboring domains and the other is the Schur complement method that subdomains are non-overlapping and separated by boundary domains. For the Schwarz method, the additive, hybrid, multiplicative and symmetric methods can be selected according to the solution update scheme. And for the Schur method, the additive and multiplicative ordering options can be chosen for solving Schur complement system. In this study, the calculation efficiency of the DDM solvers in COMSOL and the applicability to the cluster environment were examined. In aspect of efficiency, the memory requirements with different number of subdomains and calculation schemes were compared in a single node. Then, the memory requirements with increasing number of disposal tunnels and deposition holes were investigated in multiple nodes. As a result, on the cluster environment, with the help of distributed memory architecture which enables efficient memory usage, the applicability of DDM solvers to the large-scale problem of APro was confirmed.

It can take hundreds of thousands of years for decreasing radiological effects of high-level radioactive wastes to those of natural background radiation. Therefore, long-term time scale should be considered in order to demonstrate performance and safety of deep geological disposal of the radioactive wastes. The changes of surface environment for these long-term time scale can have influence on safety analysis by changing transport path of radionuclides from the radioactive wastes. Changes in climate is considered as one of main factors causing the long-term changes of the surface environment. The own effects and interactions of climate with other components of the geological disposal system are organized in features, events, and processes (FEPs). In this study, some natural processes occurred by changes of climate were suggested and the connectivity between each process is proposed based on the relation of the FEPs concerned with the changes of climate and surface environment. The processes were classified into global and regional/local scales and was analyzed, respectively. Then, the influences of the processes on shallow groundwater and surface water body environment, which might be transport path of radioactive nuclides in local/site scales, were expected. As the proposed connection demonstrate the order or hierarchical relations of the natural processes, it can shows that some output by a certain process may be input of other process connected the former process in numerical simulations for interpreting the processes. If the connection may be considered to be suitable to represent longterm changes of the surface environment, it can be evaluated that the expected scenarios based on the connection is also proper. In addition, it can be helpful in selecting factors to be studied more detailed in terms of climate change for expecting long-term changes in the surface environment by analysis on the input and output data. The results of this study can be used as basic approaches to represent the long-term changes in the surface environment caused by specific natural processes from changes of climate. It will be also helpful for formulating scenarios related to long-term evolution in the surface environment required for performance and safety assessments of the deep geological disposal.

Corrosion cells that simulates engineering barrier system have been stored in an aerobic KURT environment for 10 years, which were recovered and dismantled in 2021. The test specimens were compressed copper (Com. Cu), Cold spray copper (CSC Cu), Ti Gr.2, STS 304, and Cast nodular iron. The specimens were buffered by compact Ca-type Gyeongju bentonite (KJ-I) and compact Na-type Wyoming bentonite. And the corrosion cells were exposed to KURT groundwater at 30°C for about 10 years (3,675 days). As a result of the long-term experiment in aerobic environment, it was confirmed that Na-bentonite is more advantageous for inhibiting corrosion than Ca-bentonite. The corrosion thickness of the most specimens in Ca bentonite was slightly lower than in Na bentonite until the initial 500 days, but after 10 years, the corrosion thickness of copper and cast iron specimens in Na bentonite was clearly lower. The corrosion thickness of the copper specimen in Na bentonite was very low about 0.5 um in both Com. Cu and CSC Cu. Moreover, the corrosion thickness in Ca bentonite was very high about 4 um for Com. Cu and 6 um for CSC Cu. In the case of cast iron, the corrosion thickness in Na bentonite was about 13 um, and 15 um in Ca bentonite. The common feature of copper and cast iron specimens in Ca bentonite, which showed a high corrosion thickness, is the forming of a white mineral deposition layer on the specimen surface, which was presumed to be some kind of feldspar. On the other hand, it was found that the STS304 and Ti specimens were hardly corroded even after 10 years. In conclusion, when a white mineral deposition layer was formed on the specimen surface, the corrosion thickness always increased sharply than before, and thus it was estimated that the generation of the mineral deposition layer cause the increase of bentonite permeability, and rather the weakening of existing passive corrosion film.

The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends the deep geological disposal system as one of the disposal methods for high-level radioactive waste (HLW), such as spent nuclear fuel. The deep geological disposal system disposes of HLW in a deep and stable geological formation to isolate the HLW from the human biosphere and restrict the inflow of radionuclides into the ecosystem. It mainly consists of an engineered barrier and a natural barrier. Safety evaluation using a numerical model has been performed primarily to evaluate the buffer’s long-term stability. However, although the gas generation rate input for long-term stability evaluation is the critical factor that has the most significant influence on the long-term hydraulic-mechanical behavior of the buffer, in-depth research and experimental data are lacking. In this study, the gas generation rate on the interface between the disposal canister and the buffer material, a component of the engineered barrier, was mainly studied. Gas can be generated between the disposal canister and the buffer material due to various causes such as anaerobic corrosion of the disposal canister metal, organic matter decomposition, radiation decomposition, and steam generation due to high temperature. The generation of gas in such a disposal environment increases the pore gas pressure in the buffer and causes internal cracks. The occurred cracks increase the intrinsic permeability of the buffer, which leads to a decrease in the primary performance of the buffer. For this reason, it is essential to apply the appropriate gas generation rate according to the disposal condition and buffer material for accurate long-term stability analysis. Therefore, the theoretical models regarding the estimation of gas generation were summarized through a literature study. The amount of gas generated was estimated according to the disposal environment and material of the disposal canister. It is expected that estimated values might be used to estimate the long-term stability analysis of buffer performance according to the disposal condition.

With the wide use of greenhouses, the working hours have been increasing inside the greenhouse for workers. In the closed ventilated greenhouse, the internal environment has less affected to external weather during making a suitable temperature for crop growth. Greenhouse workers are exposed to organic dust including soil dust, pollen, pesticide residues, microorganisms during tillage process, soil grading, fertilizing, and harvesting operations. Therefore, the health status and working environment exposed to workers should be considered inside the greenhouse. It is necessary to secure basic data on particulate matter (PM) concentrations in order to set up dust reduction and health safety plans. To understand the PM concentration of working environment in greenhouse, the PM concnentrations were monitored in the cut-rose and Hallabong greenhouses in terms of PM size, working type, and working period. Compare to no-work (move) period, a significant increase in PM concentration was found during tillage operation in Hallabong greenhouse by 4.94 times on TSP (total suspended particle), 2.71 times on PM-10 (particle size of 10 μm or larger), and 1.53 times on PM-2.5, respectively. During pruning operation in cut-rose greenhouse, TSP concentration was 7.4 times higher and PM-10 concentration was 3.2 times higher than during no-work period. As a result of analysis of PM contribution ratio by particle sizes, it was shown that PM-10 constitute the largest percentage. There was a significant difference in the PM concentration between work and no-work periods, and the concentration of PM during work was significant higher (p < 0.001). It was found that workers were generally exposed to a high level of dust concentration from 2.5 μm to 35.15 μm during tillage operation.

선사시대 사회상을 설명할 수 있는 유력한 자료로서 석기 석재 연구의 필요성에 대한 인식이 높아 지기 시작한 것은 2000년대 이후이다. 그때부터 석재 동정과 석재 산지 분석 결과 등이 발굴 보고서 에 포함되기 시작하였으나, 지질학 전공자에 의한 초기의 연구가 고고학 전공자의 자체적인 연구로까 지 이어지지는 못하였다. 그에 더해 발굴 보고서에 석재 동정 결과마저 언급되지 않는 경우도 점차 증 가하고 있다. 이러한 현상에는 비파괴 분석, 육안관찰 등에 의존해야 하는 석기 석재 동정의 오류 가 능성, 연구자에 따른 동정의 차이 등 연구 첫 단계인 석재 동정부터 여러 문제점이 있다는 것에 그 요인이 있을 것이다. 이러한 문제점에 대한 대안의 하나로 석재 환경 조사를 실시하였다. 조사 대상 지역은 상대적으로 청동기시대의 유적이 다수 발견되고 산지에서 저지로 흐르는 하천이 여럿 위치하는 등 고고학적, 지 형적 조건을 고려하여 부여 서북부 지역을 선정하였다. 석재 환경 조사는 ‘1. 조사 대상 지역 선정 → 2. 조사 지역 내 유적 출토 석기 석재의 현황 파악 → 3. 지질도 등을 통한 지질 환경 파악 및 석 재 채집 지점 선정 → 4. 현지 석재 채집 → 5. 채집 석재 동정 → 6. 석기 석재와의 비교 검토’의 순서로 진행되었으며, 총 10개 지점에서 석재를 채집하여 석재 동정 및 주변 지역 출토 석기 석재와 비교 검토를 실시하였다. 이러한 석재 환경 조사는 유적 주변에서 채집된 석재를 기준으로 유적 출토 석기 석재를 동정하기 위한 작업으로, 석재 연구에 있어 가장 문제가 되는 석재 동정에 하나의 유효한 방법이 될 수 있을 것이다.