The domestic Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) decommissioning project is expected to be carried out sequentially, starting with Kori Unit 1. As a license holder, in order to smoothly operate a new decommissioning project, a process in terms of project management must be well established. Therefore, this study will discuss what factors should be considered in establishing the process of decommissioning NPPs. Various standards have been proposed as project management tools on how to express the business process in writing and in what aspects to describe it. Representatively, PMBOK, ISO 21500, and PRICE 2 may be considered. It will be necessary to consider IAEA safety standards in the nuclear decommissioning project. GSR part 6 and part 2 can be considered as two major requirements. GSR part 6 presents a total of 15 requirements, including decommissioning plans, general safety requirements until execution and termination. GSR part 2 presents basic principles for securing the safety of nuclear facilities, and there are a total of 14 requirements. Domestic regulatory guidelines should be considered, and there will be largely laws and regulations related to the decommissioning of nuclear facilities, guidelines for regulatory agencies, and guidelines and regulations related to HSE. The Nuclear Safety Act, Enforcement Decree, Enforcement Rules, and NSSC should be considered in the applicable law for nuclear facilities. Since the construction and operation process has been established for domestic decommissioning project, there will be parts where existing procedures must be applied in terms of life cycle management of facilities and the same performance entity. As a management areas classification in the construction and operation stage, it seems that a classification similar to Level 1 and Level 2 should be applied to the decommissioning project. This study analyzed the factors to be considered in the management system in preparing for the first decommissioning project in Korea. Since it is project management, it is necessary to establish a system by referring to international standards, and it is suggested that domestic regulatory reflection, existing business procedures, and domestic business conditions should be considered.

A large amount of small and medium-sized metal waste is generated during the decommissioning of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Metal waste is mostly contaminated with low-level radioactive, so it needs decontamination for self-disposal and recycling. A large amount of Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste during decontamination will be generated. The generated organic liquid waste is low in concentration, so the decomposition efficiency is low in the decomposition process. A conditioning process is necessary to concentrate at a high concentration. For effective treatment for Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste, the composition of organic liquid waste and conditioning process were analyzed. Organic acids, metal ions, radioactive nuclides, surfactants, etc. are present in the Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste, and suspended solids are sometimes generated by various reactions. According to previous studies, the concentration of organic acids including surfactants obtained results from several tens of ppm to a maximum of 1,000 ppm, so the maximum value of 1,000 ppm was assumed. For the composition and total amount of metal ions, the average value (52.7wt% Fe, 16.3wt% Ni, 15.1wt% Cr, 15.9wt% Mn) of the distribution of metal species removed by the actual decontamination process is applied, and the total amount is 1,000 ppm was assumed. As for the radionuclides, only 60Co and 137Cs, which are expected to be mainly present, were considered, and 60Co was assumed to be 2,000 Bq/g and 137Cs to be 360 Bq/g by referring to the literature. The amounts of suspended solids were assumed to be 500 ppm by referring to the characteristics of the liquid waste generated in the decontamination process of the NPPs. Based on the estimated value, a reaction formula was established and a simulated Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste was prepared. As a result of measurement using an analysis device, the composition of the estimated and simulated Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste had similar values. The conditioning and treatment process largely consists of pretreatment, conditioning, decomposition processes. Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste goes through a pretreatment process to remove impurities with large particles. In the conditioning process, treated water that has passed through the UF/RO membrane system is discharged into the environment. At this time, Concentrated water goes through a decomposition process for processing the Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste, and is discharged to the environment through a secondary RO membrane system. The conditioning process is the low-concentration Organic Decontamination Liquid Waste in the UF membrane system is forming a micelles in an RO membrane system, concentrating it to a high concentration and then go through a recirculation process in the UF membrane system. An experiment was conducted to confirm whether the concentration of surfactants occurred during the conditioning process. As a result of the experiment confirmed that the highly concentrated surfactant formed micelles and was filtered out in the UF membrane system.

Decommissioning waste is generated at all stages during the decommissioning of nuclear facilities, and various types of radioactive waste are generated in large quantities within a short period. Concrete is a major building material for nuclear facilities. It is mixed with aggregate, sand, and cement with water by the relevant mixing ratio and dried for a certain period. Currently, the proposed treatment method for volume reduction of radioactive concrete waste was involved thermomechanical and chemical treatment sequentially. The aggregate as non-radioactive materials is separated from cement components as contaminated sources of radionuclides. However, to commercialize the process established in the laboratory, it is necessary to evaluate the scale-up potential by using the unit equipment. In this study, bench-scale testing was performed to evaluate the scale-up properties of the thermomechanical and chemical treatment process, which consisted of three stages (1: Thermomechanical treatment, 2: Chemical treatment, 3: Wastewater treatment). In the first stage, lab, bench, and pilot scale thermomechanical tests were performed to evaluate the treated coarse aggregate and fines. In the second stage, the fine particles generated by the thermomechanical treatment process, were chemically treated using dissolution equipment, after then the removal efficiency and residual of cement in the small aggregate was compared with laboratory results. The final stage, the secondary wastewater containing contaminant nuclides was treated, and the contaminant nuclides could be removed by chemical precipitation method in the scale-up reactors. Furthermore, an additional study was required on the solid-liquid separation, which connected each part of the equipment. It was conducted to optimize the separation method for the characteristics of the particles to be separated and the purpose of separation. Therefore, it is expected that the basic engineering data for commercialization was collected by this study.

The decommissioning process of Kori Nuclear Power Plant No.1, which was permanently suspended in 2017, various studies and attention on the decommissioning of nuclear power plants and waste management are being focused. In particular, decommissioning of high-risk facilities should take into account both safety and economic aspects. Small defects in the decommissioning process may lead to major disasters, and the resulting economic losses will cause enormous damage at the national level. In order to prevent such damage, various decommissioning process simulations within a virtual environment should be performed, and process errors and results should be collected and analyzed through simulation to derive the optimal decommissioning scenario as possible. The platform introduced in this paper builds a virtual environment based on drawing and modeling data of Kori Nuclear Power Plant No.1 and automatically creates an optimized cutting path for dismantling the facility and internal structure, and simulates a cutting process similar to reality using Robot Arm. In addition, it is possible to derive and analyze a cutting process scenario by processing process results such as time required for work and cutting distance collected through simulation.

Organic waste generated by small and medium-sized (S&M-sized) metal decontamination in NPP decommissioning. To lower the concentration of these organic substances for a level acceptable at the disposal site, the project of “Development of Treatment Process of Organic Decontamination Liquid Wastes from Decommissioning of Nuclear Power Plants” is being carried out. The conditioning and treatment process of organic liquid waste was designed. Also, the literature was investigated to make simulated organic liquid waste, and the composition of these waste was analyzed and compared. As the decontamination agent, organic acids such as EDTA, oxalic acid, citric acid are used. The sum of the concentrations of these organic materials was set to a maximum value of 1,000 ppm. The major metal ions of the decontamination liquid waste estimated are 59Fe, 51Cr, 54Mn, 63Ni, and the concentrations are respectively 527, 163, 161, 159 ppm. Additional major metal ions are 60Co, 58Co, 137Cs. 58Co is replaced by 60Co because it has the same chemical properties as 60Co. Unlike the HLW, the contamination level of S&M-sized metal in primary system was quite low, so 60Co is set to 2,000 Bq/g. Considering the contribution of fission and gamma ray dose constant, 137Cs was estimated to 360 Bq/g. Also, suspended solids of decontamination liquid waste were set at 500 ppm. Under these assumptions, the simulated organic liquid waste was made, and then organic substances and metal ions were analyzed with TOC analyzer and ICP-OES. The TOC analysis value was expected to 392 ppm in consideration of the equivalent organic quantity. the test result was 302 ppm. Some of organics appears to have been decomposed by acid. The values of metal ions (Fe3+, Cr3+, Mn2+, Ni2+) analyzed by ICP-OES are 139, 4, 152, 158 ppm, respectively. A large amount of Cr3+ and Fe3+ were expected to exist as ions, but they existed in the form of suspended solid. Mn2+ and Ni2+ came out similar to the expected values. The designed conditioning and treatment process is largely divided into pretreatment, conditioning, and decomposition processes. After collecting in the primary liquid waste storage tank, large particulate impurities and suspensions are removed through a pretreatment process. In the conditioning process, treated liquid waste passes through UF/RO membrane system, and pure water is discharged to the environment after monitoring. Concentrated water is decomposed in the electrochemical catalyst decomposition process, then this water secondarily passes through the RO membrane system and then discharged to the environment after monitoring. Through an additional experiment, the conditioning and treatment process will be verified.

Kori unit 1, Korea’s first light-water nuclear power plant, was permanently shut down in June 2017. The operator, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP), submitted a final dismantling plan for Kori unit 1 to the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSSC) in May 2021. Pursuant to this procedure, the NSSC is preparing regulations for the decommissioning stage of large nuclear facilities for the first time in the Republic of Korea. The Korea Institute of Nuclear Non-proliferation and Control (KINAC) is also considering applying regulations on safeguards. Moreover, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) developed the “International Safeguards Guidelines for Nuclear Facilities under Decommissioning” in 2021. The guidelines describe the detailed application of safeguards measures to be considered when decommissioning nuclear facilities, dismantling essential equipment, and providing relevant information to the IAEA, as well as the scope of IAEA inspections. In addition, Dr. R. Bari of the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) proposed the Facility Safeguardability Assessment (FSA), a methodology that reflects facility characteristics from the design stage to ensure that designers, national regulators, and the IAEA communicate smoothly regarding safeguards measures. The FSA process derives expected problems with safeguards measures considering new nuclear facilities by analyzing the gap of safeguards measures applied to existing similar nuclear facilities. This study uses the existing FSA methodology to predict problems related to safeguards measures when decommissioning nuclear facilities and to analyze deviations from safeguards measure requirements according to IAEA guidelines. To this end, the reference facility is set as an operating pressurized light water reactor; the issues with the safeguards measures are summarized using the FSA Process; and a draft safeguards concept for nuclear facilities under decommissioning is designed. Furthermore, validity is confirmed through a simple analysis of the diversion path, and implications and lessons are derived. Through this, it is possible to anticipate new safeguards measures to be applied when decommissioning nuclear facilities in the Republic of Korea and review problems and considerations in advance.

The establishment of processes for the decommissioning a Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) is one of the objects that must be prepared in carrying out the decommissioning project. In particular, in the domestic situation, where there is no experience of decommissioning commercial NPPs, it is necessary to organize the tasks and contents well in advance for the successful initiation of the project. Therefore, this study intends to present a guide-level approach to develop management for domestic decommissioning projects. As a documented template for recognizing a process, there may be a process map and description, and information such as the work structure and the relations between the activities should be indicated. In reality, activities will be managed through a set of computer system, so it would be better if the work content, activity flow, relation, management target information, computerization contents, etc. were materialized in the process. What is important here is to define the management areas and activities and draw the activity flow. Domestically, it has rich experience in construction of NPPs and has a track record of exporting NPPs to the UAE. From these experiences, we have established a framework for standardized work in construction management and construction processes, and are performing them through a computerized system. Since the work of decommissioning has a similar nature to that of construction, we will be able to benchmark the procedure for the decommissioning from the construction management procedures. Typically, in the case of schedule management, the concept and structure of the construction process will be applicable to the decommissioning. Meanwhile, the licensee of domestic decommissioning is the same as the licensee that performs the operation, and the members who will perform the decommissioning also have experience working in the operation period. Therefore, the decommissioning works are an extension of the task during operation. Representatively, there are some processes that can be applied as it is even when decommissioning, such as dismantling work and the safety management process of the radiation zone. Therefore, in carrying out the decommissioning of NPPs in Korea, processes and activities of the management area should be established from the construction processes with abundant experience and the processes during operation. Rather than making a completely new work process, this approach that properly reflects the existing work flow is expected to be an appropriate way to avoid the repulsion of employees and maladjustment to the new environment.

The remote dismantling system proposed in this paper is a system that performs the actual dismantling process using the process and program predefined in the digital manufacturing system. The key to the successful applying this remote dismantling system is how to overcome the problem of the difference between the digital mockup and the actual dismantling site. In the case of nuclear facility decommissioning, compensation between the virtual world and the real world is difficult due to harsh environments such as unsophisticated dismantling sites, radiation, and underwater, while offline programming can be proposed as a solution for other industries due to its sophisticated and controllable environment. In this paper, the problem caused by the difference in the digital mockup is overcome through three steps of acquisition of 3D point cloud in radiation and underwater environment, refraction correction, and 3D registration. The 3D point cloud is acquired with a 3D scanner originally developed in our laboratory to achieve 1 kGy of radiation resistance and water resistance. Refraction correction processes the 3D point cloud acquired underwater so that the processed 3D point cloud represents the actual position of the scanned object. 3D registration creates a transformation matrix that can transform a digital mockup of the virtual world into the actual location of a scanned object at the dismantling site. The proposed remote dismantling system is verified through various cutting experiments. In the experiments, the cutting test object has a shape similar to the reactor upper internals and is made of the same material as the reactor upper internals. The 105 successful experiments demonstrate that the proposed remote dismantling system successfully solved the key problem presented in this paper.

건설해체공사와 유사한 특성을 갖는 원전 제염해체공사에서 구조적 리스크 관리는 매우 중요하다(DOE). 하지만 제염해체작업 중 발생할 수 있는 구조적 재난재해 및 위험요소는 크게 고려하지 않고 있다. 이로 인해, 구조적 재난 및 재해에 의해 발생할 수 있는 작업자 리스크 역시 체계적으로 정립되어 있지 않다. 또한, 재난 및 재해 그리고 리스크 분류체계는 작업의 특성(작업프로세스, 활용장비, 작업 위치 등)별로 분류되어 있지 않아 실제 해체공사를 위한 매뉴얼로 활용하기에 무리가 있다. 따라서 차폐 콘크리트 구조물 제염해체공사의 건설해체공사와의 유사성을 기반으로 작업의 특성별로 분류한 리스크를 도출하는 것은 원자력 발전소 해체공사 리스크 관리에 필수적으로 판단한다.