The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has facilities that are operated for the purpose of treating radioactive wastes and storing drums before sending them to a disposal site. Domestic regulations related to nuclear facility require radiological dose assessment resulting from release of gaseous radioactive effluent of nuclear facilities. In this study, ICRP-60-based dose conversion factors were applied to evaluate the radiation dose to residents in the event of operation and accident for the radioactive waste management facilities in KAERI. The radioactive gaseous effluent generated from each facility diffuse outside the exclusion area boundary (EAB), causing radiation exposure to residents. To evaluate the external exposure dose, the exposure pathways of cloudshine and radioactive contaminated soil were analyzed. The internal exposure dose was estimated by considering the exposure from respiration and ingestion of agricultural and livestock products. The maximum individual exposure dose was evaluated to be 1.71% compared to the dose limit. The assumed situation used for accidental scenarios are as follows; A fire inside the facility and falling of radioactive waste drum. It was a fire accident that caused the maximum exposure dose to individual and population living within an 80 km radius of the site. At the outer boundary of the low population zone (LPZ), the maximum effective dose and thyroid equivalent dose were estimated as 8.92 E-06% and 5.29 E-06%, respectively, compared to the dose limit. As a result of evaluating the radiological exposure dose from gaseous emissions, the radioactive waste treatment facilities and its supplementary facilities meet the regulations related to nuclear facility, and are operated safely in terms of radiological environmental impact assessment.

KAERI has developed a Radioactive Waste Information Management System (RAWINGS) to manage the life-cycle information from the generation to the disposal of radioactive waste, in compliance with the low- and medium-level radioactive waste acceptance criteria (WAC). In the radioactive waste management process, the preceding steps are to receive waste history from the waste generators. This includes an application for a specified container with a QR label, pre-inspection, and management request. Next, the succeeding steps consist of repackaging, treatment, characterization, and evaluating the suitability of disposal, for a process to transparently manage radioactive wastes. Since the system operated in 2021, The system is enhanced to manage dynamic information, including the tracking of the location of radioactive waste and the repackaging process. Small packages of waste could be classified as either radioactive or clearance waste during pre-inspection. Furthermore, waste generated in the past has already been packaged in drums, and a new algorithm has been developed to apply the repackaging when reclassification is required. All radioactive waste with the unique ID number on the specific container is managed within a database, the total amount and history of waste are managed, and statistical information is provided. This system is continuously be operated and developed to oversee life-cycle information, and serve as the foundational database for the Waste Certification Program (WCP).

As the acceptance criteria for low-intermediate-level radioactive waste cave disposal facilities of Korea Radioactive Waste Agency (KORAD) were revised, the requirements for characterization of whether radioactive waste contains hazardous substances have been strengthened. In addition, As the recent the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission Notice (Regulations on Delivery of Low- Medium-Level Radioactive Waste) scheduled to be revised, the management targets and standards for hazardous substances are scheduled to be specified and detailed. Accordingly, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) needs to prepare management methods and procedures for hazardous substances. In particular, in order to characterize the chemical requirements (explosiveness, ignitability, flammability, corrosiveness, and toxicity) contained in radioactive waste, it must be proven through documents or data that each item does not contain hazardous substances, and quality assurance for the overall process must be provided. In order to identify the characteristics of radioactive waste that will continue to be generated in the future, KAERI needs to introduce a management system for hazardous substances in radioactive waste and establish a quality assurance system. Currently, KAERI is thoroughly managing chelates (EDTA, NTA, etc.), but the detailed management procedures for hazardous substances related to chemical requirements in radioactive waste in the radiation management area specified above are insufficient. The KAERI’s Laboratory Safety Information Network has a total periodic regulatory review system in place for the purchase, movement, and disposal of chemical substances for each facility. However, there is no documents or data to prove that the hazardous substances held in the facility are not included in the radioactive waste, and there are no procedures for managing hazardous substances. Therefore, it is necessary to establish procedures for the management of hazardous substances, and we plan to prepare management procedures for hazardous substances so that chemical substances can be managed according to the procedures at each facility during preliminary inspection before receiving radioactive waste. The procedure provides definitions of terms and types of management targets for each characteristic of the chemical requirements specified above (explosiveness, ignition, flammability, corrosiveness, and toxicity). In addition, procedure also contains treatment methods of radioactive waste generated by using hazardous substances and management methods of in/out, quantity, history of that substances, etc. As the law is revised in the future, management will be carried out according to the relevant procedures. In this study, we aim to present the hazardous substance management procedures being established to determine whether radioactive waste contains hazardous substances in accordance with the revised the notice and strengthened acceptance criteria. Through this, we hope to contribute to improving reliability so that radioactive waste could be disposed of thoroughly and safely.

Every engineering decision in radioactive waste management should be based on both technical and economic considerations. Especially, the management of low-level radioactive waste (LLW) is more critical on economic concerns, due to its long-term and continuous nature, which emphasizes the importance of economic analysis. In this study, economic factors for LLW management were discussed with appropriate engineering applications. Two major factors that should be taken into account when assessing economic expectations are the accuracy of the results and its proper balancing with ALARA philosophy (As Low As Reasonably Achievable). The accuracy of the results depends on the correct application of alternatives within a realistic framework of waste processing. This is because the LLW management process involves variables such as component type, physical dimensions, and the monetary value at the processing date. Two commonly used alternatives are the simplified lump sum present worth and levelized annual cost methods, which are based on annual and capital costs. However, these discussions on alternatives not only pertain to the time series value of operational costs but also to future technical advancements, which are crucial for engineers. As new research results on LLW treatment emerge, proper consideration and adoption should be given to technical cost management. As safety is the core value of the entire nuclear industry, the ALARA philosophy should also be considered in the cost management of LLW. The typical cost of exposure in man-rem has ranged from $1,000 to $20,000 over the past decades. However, with increasing concerns about health and international political threats, the cost of man-rem should be subject to stricter criteria, even the balancing of costs and safety concerns is much controverse issue. Throughout the study, the importance of incorporating proper engineering insights into the assessment of technical value for the financial management of LLW was discussed. However, it’s essential to remember that financial management should not be solely assessed based on the size of expenses but rather by evaluating the current financial status, the value of money at the time, and anticipated future costs, considering the specific context and timeframe.

Evaluating the effectiveness of the radiation protection measures deployed at the Centralized Radioactive Waste Management Facility in Ghana is pivotal to guaranteeing the safety of personnel, public and the environment, thus the need for this study. RadiagemTM 2000 was used in measuring the dose rate of the facility whilst the personal radiation exposure of the personnel from 2011 to 2022 was measured from the thermoluminescent dosimeter badges using Harshaw 6600 Plus Automated TLD Reader. The decay store containing scrap metals from dismantled disused sealed radioactive sources (DSRS), and low-level wastes measured the highest dose rate of 1.06 ± 0.92 μSv·h−1. The range of the mean annual average personnel dose equivalent is 0.41–2.07 mSv. The annual effective doses are below the ICRP limit of 20 mSv. From the multivariate principal component analysis biplot, all the personal dose equivalent formed a cluster, and the cluster is mostly influenced by the radiological data from the outer wall surface of the facility where no DSRS are stored. The personal dose equivalents are not primarily due to the radiation exposures of staff during operations with DSRS at the facility but can be attributed to environmental radiation, thus the current radiation protection measures at the Facility can be deemed as effective.

The amount of waste that contains or is contaminated with radionuclides is increasing gradually due to the use of radioactive material in various fields including the operation and decommissioning of nuclear facilities. Such radioactive waste should be safely managed until its disposal to protect public health and the environment. Predisposal management of radioactive waste covers all the steps in the management of radioactive waste from its generation up to disposal, including processing (pretreatment, treatment, and conditioning), storage, and transport. There could be a lot of strategies for the predisposal management of radioactive waste. In order to comply with safety requirements including Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC) at the radioactive waste repository however, the optimal scenario must be derived. The type and form of waste, the radiation dose of workers and the public, the technical options, and the costs would be taken into account to determine the optimal one. The time required for each process affects the radiation dose and respective cost as well as those for the following procedures. In particular, the time of storing radioactive waste would have the highest impact because of the longest period which decreases the concentrations of radionuclides but increases the cost. There have been little studies reported on optimization reflecting variations of radiation dose and cost in predisposal management scenarios for radioactive waste. In this study, the optimal storage time of radioactive waste was estimated for several scenarios. In terms of the radiation dose, the cumulative collective dose was used as the parameter for each process. The cost was calculated considering the inflation rate and interest rate. Since the radiation dose and the cost should be interconvertible for optimization, the collective dose was converted into monetary value using the value so-called “alpha value” or “monetary value of Person-Sv”.

During the operation of the nuclear power plant, various radioactive waste are generated. The spent resin, boron concentrates, and DAW are classified as a generic radioactive waste. They are treated and stored at radioactive waste building. In the reactor vessel, different types of radioactive waste are generated. Since the materials used in reactor core region exposed to high concentration of neutrons, they exhibit higher level of surface dose rate and specific activity. And they are usually stored in spent fuel pool with spent fuel. Various non-fuel radioactive wastes are stored in spent fuel pool, which are skeleton, control rod assembly, burnable neutron absorber, neutron source, in core detector, etc. The skeleton is composed of stainless 304 and Inconel-718. There are two types of control rod assembly, that are WH type and OPR type. The WH type control rod is composed of Ag-In-Cd composites. The OPR type control rod is composed of B4C and Inconel-625. In this paper, the characteristics and storage status of the non-fuel radioactive waste will be reported. Also, the management strategy for the various non-fuel radioactive waste will be discussed.

After the Fukushima accident, significant amount of radioactively contaminated waste has been generated with 50~250 m3/day and stored in tanks of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant site. The contaminated water is treated by various treatment facility such as KURION, SARRY, Reverse Osmosis, and ALPS to remove 62 radioactive nuclides except H-3. For the contaminated water treatment process, massive secondary wastes such as sludge, spent adsorbent, and so on as by-product are being generated by the facilities. In Japan, to treat the secondary wastes, melting technologies such as GeoMelt, In-can vitrification and Cold Crucible Induction Melting vitrification are considered as a candidate technologies. In this study, the technologies were reviewed, and the advantage and disadvantage of each technology were evaluated as the candidate technologies for treatment of the secondary wastes.

The decommissioning of Korea Research Reactor Units 1 and 2 (KRR-1&2), the first research reactors in South Korea, began in 1997. Approximately 5,000 tons of waste will be generated when the contaminated buildings are demolished. Various types of radioactive waste are generated in large quantities during the operation and decommissioning of nuclear facilities, and in order to dispose of them in a disposal facility, it is necessary to physico-chemically characterize the radioactive waste. The need to transparently and clearly conduct and manage radioactive waste characterization methods and results in accordance with relevant laws, regulations, acceptance standards is emerging. For radioactive waste characterization information, all information must be provided to the disposal facility by measuring and testing the physical, chemical, and radiological characteristics and inputting related documents. At this time, field workers have the inconvenience of performing computerized work after manually inputting radioactive waste characterization information, and there is always a possibility that human errors may occur during manual input. Furthermore, when disposing of radioactive waste, the production of the documents necessary for disposal is also done manually, resulting in the aforementioned human error and very low production efficiency of numerous documents. In addition, as quality control is applied to the entire process from generation to treatment and disposal of radioactive waste, it is necessary to physically protect data and investigate data quality in order to manage the history information of radioactive waste produced in computerized work. In this study, we develop a system that can directly compute the radioactive waste characterization information at the field site where the test and measurement are performed, protect the stored radioactive waste characterization data, and provide a system that can secure reliability.

Korea currently has two permanent shutdown Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs), and the decommissioning project is expected to begin soon, starting with the first commercial NPP. The decommissioning project will eventually be the disposal of radioactive waste in the final stage of the work, and in that respect, proper tracking and history management should be well established in the management of waste. This is in line with the guidelines that regulatory agencies should also properly manage radioactive waste. Therefore, this study intends to examine the factors that should be considered in terms of tracking and management of radioactive waste in decommissioning nuclear facilities. The starting and final point of tracking radioactive waste generated during decommissioning is the physical inventory of the current as-is state and the final container. In this respect, the tracking of waste starts from the beginning of the dismantling operation. Thus, at the stage of approval of the decommissioning work, it may begin with an ID scheme, such as the functional location in operation for the target System, Structure, and Components (SSCs). As the dismantling work progresses, SSCs will be classified by nature and radiological level, which will be placed in containers in small packaging units. At this time, the small package should be given an ID. After that, the dismantling work leads to the treatment of waste, which involves a series of operations such as cutting, decomposition, melting, and decontamination. Each step in which these tasks are performed will be placed in a container, and ID assignment is also required. Until now, the small packaging container is for transfer after each treatment, and it is placed in the storage container in the final stage, at which time the storage container also gives a unique ID. Considerations for follow-up management were reviewed assuming solid waste, which is the majority of dismantled radioactive waste considered in this study. The ID system should be prepared from the start of the dismantling work, ID generation of the small transporting container and ID generation of the final disposal container during the intermediate waste treatment process, and each ID generation of the previous stage should be linked to each generation stage. In addition, each ID must be generated, and the definition of the grant scheme and attributes is required.

Technology for high-level-waste disposal employing a multibarrier concept using engineered and natural barrier in stable bedrock at 300–1,000 m depth is being commercialized as a safe, long-term isolation method for high-level waste, including spent nuclear fuel. Managing heat generated from waste is important for improving disposal efficiency; thus, research on efficient heat management is required. In this study, thermal management methods to maximize disposal efficiency in terms of the disposal area required were developed. They efficiently use the land in an environment, such as Korea, where the land area is small and the amount of waste is large. The thermal effects of engineered barriers and natural barriers in a high-level waste disposal repository were analyzed. The research status of thermal management for the main bedrocks of the repository, such as crystalline, clay, salt, and other rocks, were reviewed. Based on a characteristics analysis of various heat management approaches, the spent nuclear fuel cooling time, buffer bentonite thermal conductivity, and disposal container size were chosen as efficient heat management methods applicable in Korea. For each method, thermal analyses of the disposal repository were performed. Based on the results, the disposal efficiency was evaluated preliminarily. Necessary future research is suggested.