In the Kori power plant radioactive waste storage, the concentrated waste and spent resin drums generated in the past are repacked and stored in large concrete drums. Four 200 L drums of solidified concentrated waste are packed in the square concrete. One 200 L drum of spent resin is packed inside the round concrete. In order to build a foundation for disposal of large concrete drums that generated in the past, it is necessary to develop a large concrete drum handling device and disposal suitability evaluation technology. In order to build handling equipment and establishment of disposal base, such as weight and volume, of square and round concrete containers must be identified. In addition, waste information, such as the production record of the built in drum and the type of contents, is required. Therefore, this study plans to comprehensively review the characteristics of the waste by investigating the structure of square and round concrete containers and the records of internal drum production.

Radioactive liquid waste generated during the operation of domestic nuclear power plants is treated through a somewhat different liquid radwaste system (LRS) for each plant. Prior to the introduction of standard nuclear power plants, LRS used a concentrated water dry system (CWDS) to evaporate liquid waste and manage it in the form of dry powder. The boron-containing radioactive liquid waste dry powder was solidified using paraffin from 1995 to 2010, and about 3,650 drums (based on 200 L) of paraffin solidified drums are currently stored in nuclear power plants. Paraffin solidification drums do not meet the acceptance criteria for radioactive waste repositories because it is difficult to secure the homogeneity of the solidified body and there are concerns about leaching of radioactive waste due to the low melting point of paraffin. In order to solve this problem and safely permanently dispose of paraffin solidification drums, the characteristics of dry powder paraffin solidification drums containing boron-containing radioactive liquid waste must be analyzed and appropriate treatment technology utilizing the results must be introduced. This study analyzes the physical properties of paraffin, the chemical properties of boron-containing radioactive waste dry powder, and the physicochemical properties of paraffin solidification powder, and proposes an appropriate alternative technology for treating boron-containing radioactive waste dry drum. When disposing of the paraffin solidification drum with boron-containing radioactive liquid waste dry powder, the solidification body must be effectively withdrawn from the drum and the paraffin must be completely separated from the solidification body. When disposing the drum, the solidified material must be effectively extracted from the drum and the paraffin must be completely separated from the solidified material. Afterwards, the paraffin must be self-disposed, and the radioactive waste must be disposed of in accordance with acceptance criteria of repository. We looked at how each characteristic of the paraffin solidification drum with boron-containing radioactive liquid waste dry powder can be utilized in each of the above treatment processes.

With the development of the nuclear industry and the increase in the use of radioactive materials, the generation of radioactive waste is increasing. As the generation of radioactive waste increases, the occurrence of related safety accidents is also increasing, and it is necessary to develop a radioactive waste monitoring technology to prevent such accidents in advance and efficiently manage radioactive waste. In Information and Communication Technology (ICT), various ICT technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), and Virtual Reality (VR) that can help with the safety management of these radioactive wastes are being developed. In this study, a radioactive waste monitoring technology was developed using ICT technology, such as management of the entire cycle history of waste using Quick Response (QR) codes, and development of AR visualization technology for small packages of radioactive waste. In addition, by using IoT technology to collect desired data from sensors and store the results, after the waste drum is loaded in the waste storage, a technology was developed to track and monitor the history and movement of the waste drum from repackaging to transfer to the storage. The data required for monitoring the radioactive waste drum includes location information, whether the drum is open or closed, temperature and humidity, etc. To collect this information, a drum monitoring technology was built with a 2.4 G wireless router, an anchor constituting a virtual zone, a tag to be mounted on the drum container, and a WNT server that collects sensor data. The network tool provided by WirePas was used for network configuration, and the status of gateways and nodes can be monitored by interworking with the WNT server. The configured IoT sensor technology were tested in a waste storage environment. Four anchors were installed and linked to the network to match the virtual zone and the real storage zone, and it was confirmed whether the movement of the tag was recorded on the network while moving the tag including the IoT sensor for analyzing location information. Based on these research results, it can contribute to the safety management of radioactive waste and establishment of Waste Acceptance Criteria (WCP) by and managing the history and monitoring the waste in the entire cycle from repackaging to disposal.

During decommissioning of a nuclear power plant, a large amount of radioactive waste is produced, and it is known to cost more than 300 billion won to dispose the waste. To reduce the disposal cost, it is essential to minimize the number of radioactive waste drums, which can be achieved by detecting and removing hotspot contaminations in the radioactive waste drums. Therefore, a Compton CT system for radioactive waste monitoring is under development, which provides the images of both the internal structure of the drum and the radioactive hotspot(s) in the drum. Based on the acquired information, the activity of hotspots can be estimated. The performance of the system is affected by various geometry factors. Therefore, it is essential to determine optimal configuration by evaluating the effects of the factors on the performance of the system. In the present study, we determined the optimum value of the factors and then predicted the performance of the optimized system by using a simulator based on the Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation. For optimization, the factors were evaluated in terms of structural similarity index measure (SSIM) and measurement time. The considered factors were the activity of the CT source, source to object distance (SOD), object to detector distance (ODD), and projection angle. The simulation result showed that the activities of the CT sources were determined as 23 mCi for 137Cs and 9.6 mCi for 60Co. The optimal SOD and ODD were 180 cm and 40 cm, respectively. The optimal projection angle was evaluated as 4° since it achieves the SSIM of 0.95 faster than other projection angles. With the optimized parameters, the performance of the system was evaluated using the IAEA gamma CT standard phantom containing a hotspot of 137Cs (7.02 μCi). The Compton image was reconstructed using the back-projection algorithm, and the CT image was reconstructed using the filtered back-projection algorithm. The result showed that the location of the hotspot in the Compton image was well identified at the true position. The acquired CT image also well represented the internal structure of the phantom, and the estimated mean linear attenuation coefficient value (μ= 0.0789 cm−1) of the phantom was close to the true value (μ= 0.0752 cm−1). In addition, the hotspot activity estimated by combining the information of the Compton image and CT image was 8.06 μCi. Hence, it was found that the Compton CT system provides essential information for radioactive waste drums.

실제 드럼 내에 존재하는 핵종으로부터 방출되는 감마선을 외부에서 측정하여 그로부터 드럼 내 핵종의 양을 정확하게 분석하기 위해서는 먼저 적절한 교정표준의 선택과 드럼 내 매질의 밀도와 핵종의 분포에 대한 감마선 감쇠보정이 반드시 필요하다. 본 연구에서는 드림 내 핵종의 분석을 위하여 밀도가 다른 두 개의 모델드럼을 이용하였으며 전송선원으로써는 (10 mCi), 표준선원으로는 혼합선원()을 이용하였다. 그리고 드럼과 검출기 사이의 거리를 달리하면서 모델드럼 내의 표준선원으로부터 나오는 감마선을 계측하여, 감쇠보정이 되지 않은 이 측정값에 3 종류의 감마선 감쇠보정을 각각 수행하였다. 그 결과 밀도가 낮은 드럼에서의 오차는 10 % 이하이었고, 밀도가 높은 드럼에서의 오차는 25 % 이하이었다. 또한 드럼과 검출기사이의 거리가 근거리(70 cm, 드림구획 : 10 segments)일 때, 오차는 원거리(90 cm, 드럼구획 : 8 segments)에서의 오차보다는 낮았는데 이는 상대적으로 1 segment에 대한 부피차이에 기인한 밀도 측정오차가 낮고 감마선의 산란이 낮았기 때문이다.