Concrete decontamination tools capable of removing the nuclear contaminated surface are necessary to minimize the amount of concrete waste generated in the process of decontamination and dismantling of nuclear power plants. Laser scabbling is a decontamination technique that removes the contaminated surface layers concrete surface by inducing internal explosion. The application principle of laser scabbling technology uses the porous nature of concrete including moisture. When high thermal energy is applied to the concrete surface, an explosion at pores is induced along with an increase in water vapor pressure. High-powered laser beam can be an effective induction source of local explosive spalling on concrete surface. In this study, the scabbling test using a 5 kW highpowered fiber laser was conducted on the concrete blocks to establish the optimal conditions for surface decontamination. It was also measured the volume peeled off the concrete surface under the conditions of two different laser head speeds. Furthermore, we tested the removal efficiency of radioactive concrete particles generated during high-power fiber laser scabbling process. A 5 kW laser beam was applied to the concrete surface at two different laser head speeds - 120 mm/min and 600 mm/min. The laser beam repeatedly moved 200 mm horizontally and 40 mm vertically within the concrete block. The amount of surface concrete removed from concrete block was calculated from the measurement of the volume and mean depth using a 3D scanner device (laser-probed Global Advantage 9.12.8(HEXAGON)) for the two different the laser head speeds. By increasing the laser head speed, less explosive spalling occurred due to shorter contact time of the laser beam with the concrete. The laser head speed of 600 mm/min reduced about 89% of the waste generated by shallow depth of scabbling as compared to the waste generated at the laser head speed of 120 mm/min. The fiber laser scabbling system was developed for surface decontamination of radioactive concrete in nuclear power plants. Tests were performed to find the optimum parameters to reduce the generation of particulate waste from the contaminated concrete surface by controlling the laser head speeds. It was confirmed that the wastes from surface decontamination was reduced up to 89% by increasing laser head speed from 120 mm/min to 600 mm/min. It was also observed that the cylindrical tube effectively vacuumed the debris generated by the explosive spalling into the collector. Removal efficiencies of concrete particles were measured greater than 99.9% with ring blower power of 650 air watt of the filter system.

Laser scabbling has the potential to be a valuable technique capable of effectively decontaminating highly radioactive concrete surface at nuclear decommissioning sites. Laser scabbling tool using an optical fiber has a merits of remote operation at a long range, which provides further safety for workers at nuclear decommissioning sites. Furthermore, there is no reaction force and low secondary waste generation, which reduces waste disposal costs. In this study, an integrated decontamination system with laser scabbling tool was employed to test the removal performance of the concrete surface. The integrated decontamination system consisted of a fiber laser, remote controllable mobile cart, and a debris collector device. The mobile cart controlled the translation speed and position of the optical head coupled with 20 m long process fiber. A 5 kW high-powered laser beam emitted from the optical head impacted the concrete block with dimensions of 300 mm × 300 mm × 80 mm to induce explosive spalling on its surface. The concrete debris generated from the spalling process were collected along the flexible tube connected with collector device. We used a three-dimensional scanner device to measure the removed volume and depth profile.

Laser scabbling experiments were conducted with the aim of developing concrete decontamination technology. Laser scabbling system contains a 6 kW fiber laser (IPG YLS-6000, λ=1,070 nm) and optical head, which are connected with process fiber (core dia.: 600 μm, length: 20 m). Optical head consists of two lenses (f = 160 mm and 100 mm) to collimate and focus laser beam. The focused laser beam is passed through the small diameter of nozzle (throat dia.: 3 mm) to prevent the laser-produced debris into head. And then, the focused beam is directed toward concrete block as continuously diverging. The diverged laser beam was incident on the high-strength concrete with 300 mm (length) × 300 mm (height) × 80 mm (width) to induce explosive spalling on the concrete surface. The optical head was moved by X-Y-Z manipulate coupled with a computerized numerical control while scabbling. We have observed not only active spalling on the concrete surface but energetic scattering of laserproduced debris when scabbling on high-strength concretes. It indicates the need for a device capable of collecting the laser-produced debris. We newly designed and manufactured dust collector coupled with cylindrical tube to prevent scattering of laser-produced debris into ambient environment. The collecting system was evaluated by estimating the collecting efficiency for laser-produced debris while scabbling. The collecting efficiency was calculated on the basis of the information on the mass loss of concrete block after laser scabbling and the mass of collected debris in a container. The collecting efficiency was found to be over 85%.

In decommissioning a nuclear power plant, numerous concrete structures need to be demolished and decontaminated. Although concrete decontamination technologies have been developed globally, concrete cutting remains problematic due to the secondary waste production and dispersion risk from concrete scabbling. To minimize workers’ radiation exposure and secondary waste in dismantling and decontaminating concrete structures, the following conceptual designs were developed. A micro-blast type scabbling technology using explosive materials and a multi-dimensional contamination measurement and artificial intelligence (AI) mapping technology capable of identifying the contamination status of concrete surfaces. Trials revealed that this technology has several merits, including nuclide identification of more than 5 nuclides, radioactivity measurement capability of 0.1–107 Bq·g−1, 1.5 kg robot weight for easy handling, 10 cm robot self-running capability, 100% detonator performance, decontamination factor (DF) of 100 and 8,000 cm2·hr−1 decontamination speed, better than that of TWI (7,500 cm2·hr−1). Hence, the micro-blast type scabbling technology is a suitable method for concrete decontamination. As the Korean explosives industry is well developed and robot and mapping systems are supported by government research and development, this scabbling technology can efficiently aid the Korean decommissioning industry.

A laser scabbling experiment was performed using a high-power fiber laser to investigate the removal rate of the concrete block and the scabbled depth. Concrete specimens with a 28-day compressive strength of 30 MPa were used in this study. Initially, we conducted the scabbling experiment under a stationary laser beam condition to determine the optimum scan speed. The laser interaction time with the concrete surface varied between 3 s and 40 s. The degree of spalling and vitrification on the surface was primarily dependent on the laser interaction time and beam power. Furthermore, thermal images were captured to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of temperature during the scabbling process. Based on the experimental results, the scan speed at which the optical head moved over the concrete was set to be 300 mm∙min−1 or 600 mm∙min−1 for the 4.8-kW or 6.8-kW laser beam, respectively. The spalling rates and average depth on the concrete blocks were measured to be 87 cm3∙min−1 or 227 cm3∙min−1 and 6.9 mm or 9.8 mm with the 4.8-kW or 6.8-kW laser beams, respectively.