General phases in the plan and implementation of an environmental remediation of radioactively contaminated sites are planning for remediation, site characterization, remediation criteria, remediation strategy, implementing remediation actions, and conducting post-remediation activities. Environmental remediation should commence with a planning stage. It is helpful to prepare reports which detail all the supporting activities related to these elements before significant levels of funds and efforts are committed. Site characterization is needed to provide sufficient data to make strategic decisions on the environmental remediation activities. The source characterization should include both waste characterization and facility or site characterization and should provide reliable estimates of the release rates of radioactive constituents as well as constituent distribution. During the preliminary site characterization, an engineering study should be conducted to develop remediation options which address the specific contaminant problem and are aimed to reduce radiological and chemical exposure. Options will include engineering approaches and associated technologies. A preliminary selection of options may be made based on several factors including future sites use, technical considerations, public acceptability, cost, and regulatory requirements. The implementation of remediation actions includes procurement of the selected technology, preparation of the site, development of a health and safety plan, development of operations procedures, staff selection and training, completion of site cleanup, verification, waste disposal, and release of the site for any future use. Once remediation activities have been completed and verified, the remediated site can be released for restricted or unrestricted use. Remediation of radioactively contaminated sites may require special adaptation to address sites covering very large surface areas or those which are deep and difficult to access. Quality assurance may be very important to the verification of environmental remediation activities. The selection of optimal remediation technologies to solve or mitigate the safety of an environmental contamination problem should be taken into account several factors. The several factors include performance (the ability of the technology to reduce risk to the health and safety of the public and to the environment), reliability and maintenance requirements for the technology, costs of implementing the technology, infrastructure available to support the technology, availability(the ease of accessing the technology and associated services), risk to workers and public safety, environmental impacts of the technology, ability of the technology to meet regulatory acceptance, and communication of stakeholder.

Kori-1 and Wolseong-1 nuclear power plants were permanently shut down in June 2017 and December 2019, and are currently in the preparation stage for decommissioning. In this regard, it is necessary to secure nuclear power plant decommissioning capacity in preparation for the domestic decommissioning marketplace. To address this, the Korea Research Institute of Decommissioning (KRID) was established to build a framework for the development of integrated nuclear decommissioning technology to support the nuclear decommissioning industry. The institute is currently under construction in the Busan-Ulsan border area, and a branch is planned to be established in the Gyeongju area. Recently, R&D projects have been launched to develop equipment for the demonstration and support verification of decommissioning technology. As part of the R&D project titled “Development and demonstration of the system for radioactivity measurement at the decommissioning site of a nuclear power plant”, we introduce the plan to develop a radioactivity measurement system at the decommissioning site and establish a demonstration system. The tasks include (1) measurement of soil radioactive contamination and classification system, (2) visualization system for massive dismantling of nuclear facilities, (3) automatic remote measurement equipment for surface contamination, and (4) bulk clearance verification equipment. The final goal is to develop a real-time measurement and classification system for contaminated soil at the decommissioning site, and to establish a demonstration system for nuclear power plant decommissioning. The KRID aims to contribute and support the technological independence and commercialization for domestic decommissioning sites remediation of nuclear power plant decommissioning site by establishing a field applicability evaluation system for the environmental remediation technology and equipment demonstration.