Deep geologic disposal of high-level nuclear wastes (HLW) requires intensive monitoring instrumentations to ensure long-term security. Acoustic emission (AE) method is considered as an effective method to monitor the mechanical degradation of natural rock and man-made concrete structures. The objectives of this study are (a) to identify the AE characteristics emitted from concretes as concrete materials under different types of loading, (b) to suggest AE parametric criteria to determine loading types and estimate the failure stage, and finally (c) to examine the feasibility of using AE method for real-time monitoring of geologic disposal system of HLW. This study performs a series of the mechanical experiments on concrete samples simultaneously with AE monitoring, including the uniaxial compression test (UCT), Brazilian tensile test (BTT) and punch through shear test (PTST). These mechanical tests are chosen to explore the effect of loading types on the resulting AE characteristics. This study selects important AE parameters which includes the AE count, average frequency (AF) and RA value in the time domain, and the peak frequency (PF) and centroid frequency in the frequency domain. The result reveals that the cumulative AE counts, the maximum RA value and the moving average PF show their potentials as indicators to damage progress for a certain loading type. The observed trends in the cumulative AE counts and the maximum RA value show three unique stages with an increase in applied stress: the steady state stage (or crack initiation stage; < 70% of yield stress), the transition stage (or damage progression stage; 70–90% of yield stress) and the rising stage (or failure stage; > 90% of yield stress). In addition, the moving average PF of PTST in the early damage stage appears to be particularly lower than that of UCT and BTT. The loading in BTT renders distinctive responses in the slope of the maximum RA–cumulative AE count (or tan ). The slope value shows less than 0.25 when the stress is close to 30% of BTT, 60% of UCT and 75% of PTST and mostly after 90% of yield stress, the slope mostly decreases than 0.25 in all tests. This study advances our understanding on AE responses of concrete materials with well-controlled laboratoryscale experimental AE data, and provides insights into further development of AE-base real-time diagnostic monitoring of structures made of rocks and concretes.