Operating and decommissioning nuclear power plants generates radioactive waste. This radioactive waste can be categorized into several different levels, for example, low, intermediate, and high, according to the regulations. Currently, low and intermediate-level waste are stored in conventional 200-liter drums to be disposed. However, in Korea, the disposal of intermediate-level radioactive waste is virtually impossible as there are no available facilities. Furthermore, large-sized intermediate- level radioactive waste, such as reactor internals from decommissioning, need to be segmented into smaller sizes so they can be adequately stored in the conventional drums. This segmentation process requires additional costs and also produces secondary waste. Therefore, this paper suggests repurposing the no-longer-used spent nuclear fuel casks. The casks are larger in size than the conventional drums, thus requiring less segmentation of waste. Furthermore, the safety requirements of the spent nuclear fuel casks are severer than those of the drums. Hence, repurposed spent nuclear fuel casks could better address potential risks such as dropping, submerging, or a fire. In addition, the spent nuclear fuel casks need to be disposed in compliance with the regulations for low level radioactive waste. This cost may be avoided by repurposing the casks.

Spent nuclear fuel is a very complex material because various elements such as fission products, transuranium elements and activation products are produced from initial fresh UO2 fuel after irradiation. These elements exist in UO2 with various forms and can change the structure and of physicochemical properties of UO2. These changes could provide the surface activation site that could enhance chemical reactions and corrosion processes, and would significantly affect the storage environment for long-term disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Therefore, it can be important to understand the characteristics of spent nuclear fuel to design reliable and safe geological repositories. However, it is too hard to study the characteristics of spent nuclear fuel, because it is a very complex material by itself and not easy to handle due to its radioactivity, and it is also difficult to independently understand the effects of each element. Therefore, a simulated spent nuclear fuel containing an element that forms a solid solution and epsilon particle was manufactured to understand the change in characteristics of each element. Most of the elements that form solid solutions are lanthanides or actinides and can change the structure of the UO2 lattice itself. The epsilon particles exist as metals at the grain boundaries of UO2. In this study, structural changes were measured using XRD, SEM, and Raman spectroscopy, and physical and chemical properties were also identified by measuring electrical conductivity and electrochemical properties. The results were summarized, and the effects of solid solution elements and epsilon particles on the structure and properties of UO2 matrix were compared and discussed.

본 논문은 유기성 폐자원의 하나인 가축분뇨(우분)를 사용하여 고형연료화 가능성을 연구하고자 하였으며 생성물 제작 시 반탄화 방법을 이용하였다. 우분의 낮은 발열량을 개선하기 위해 첨가물을 사용하였으며 첨가물은 임업부산물인 톱밥과 계설성 폐기물인 낙엽을 사용하여 폐기물을 자원화 하고자 하였다. 반탄화 실험 진행 시 반응온도는 200-260℃까지 20℃씩 차이를 두어 생성물을 제작하였으며 반응 시간은 15분, 30분, 45분으로 나누어 생성물을 제작 후 실험 조건이 반탄화 생성물에 미치는 영향을 알고 자 하였다. 첨가물은 우분 대비 9:1, 8:2(우분:첨가물)의 비율로 섞어 시료 제작 후 반응생성물을 제작하였다. 본 실험을 통해 우리나라 고형연료제품 기준인 3,500 kcal/kg에 준하는 생성물을 얻을 수 있었으며, 첨가물을 추가하여 개선된 생성물을 얻을 수 있었다.

Membranes techniques used to convert chemical energy into electrical energy from energy sources such as hydrogen, salt water, and water. Membrane materials have transport property of desire molecular and barrier property for satisfy to requirement of cell performance. Typically, PFSA polymer is used to fabricate membrane. Each material has different characteristics depending on the membrane formation conditions. Macroscopic characteristics are difficult to correlation with molecular motion, mobility, and transport within membrane matrices. NMR spectroscopy can analysis about these characteristics by observing the molecule level. In this study, NMR spectroscopy can provide fundamental information of PFSA ionomers and correlation with macroscopic characteristics.

SAFCs are recently being highlighted to overcome the disadvantages of AFCs. According to the recent works, alkaline doped PBI membranes exhibited good ionic conductivity, acceptable mechanical strength and high thermal stability. Suitable ionomer binder solutions for SAFCs were necessary. In this study, QPBIs having quaternized intermediate MGMC in the side group were synthesized for use as anion conducting ionomer binder. In addition, crosslinker was added in the catalyst slurry to improve the mechanical strength and chemical stability. The QPBIs were investigated in terms of FT-IR, NMR, ionic conductivity, KOH uptake etc. Moreover, MEAs prepared with different amounts of ionomer binder in electrodes were evaluated by CV and IV curve.

Recently, Korea’s municipal wastewater treatment plants generated amount of wastewater sludge per day. However, ocean dumping of sewage sludge has been prohibited since 2012 by the London dumping convention and protocol and thus removal or treatment of wastewater sludge from field sites is an important issue on the ground site. The hydrothermal carbonization is one of attractive thermo-chemical method to upgrade sewage sludge to produce solid fuel with benefit method from the use of no chemical catalytic. Hydrothermal carbonization improved that the upgrading fuel properties and increased materials and energy recovery ,which is conducted at temperatures ranging from 200 to 350°C with a reaction time of 30 min. Hydrothermal carbonization increased the heating value though the increase of the carbon and fixed carbon content of solid fuel due to dehydration and decarboxylation reaction. Therefore, after the hydrothermal carbonization, the H/C and O/C ratios decreased because of the chemical conversion. Energy retention efficiency suggest that the optimum temperature of hydrothermal carbonization to produce more energy-rich solid fuel is approximately 200°C.

Much research into fuel cells operating at a temperature below 800℃. is being performed. There are sig-nificant efforts to replace the yttria-stabilized zirconia electrolyte with a doped ceria electrolyte that has high ionic con-ductivity even at a lower temperature. Even if the doped ceria electrolyte has high ionic conductivity, it also shows highelectronic conductivity in a reducing environment, therefore, when used as a solid electrolyte of a fuel cell, the power-generation efficiency and mechanical properties of the fuel cell may be degraded. In this study, gadolinium-doped ceriananopowder with Al2O3 and Mn2O3 as a reinforcing and electron trapping agents were synthesized by ultrasonic pyrol-ysis process. After firing, their microstructure and mechanical and electrical properties were investigated and comparedwith those of pure gadolinium-doped ceria specimen.

Microstructural and mechanical properties of Ni-YSZ fabricated using SPS processing have been investigated at various sintering temperatures. Our study shows samples to be applied as a SOFC anode have the proper porosity of 40% and high hardness when processed at 1100ºC. These results are comparable to the values obtained at 100- 200ºC higher sintering temperature reported by others. This result is important because when the fabrication processes are performed above 1100ºC, the mechanical property starts to decrease drastically. This is caused by the fast grain coarsening at the higher temperature, which initiates a mismatch between thermal expansion coefficients of Ni and YSZ and induces cracks as well.

In the segmented-in-series solid-oxide fuel cells (SIS-SOFCs), fabrication techniques which use decalcomania paper have many advantages, i.e., an increased active area of the electrode; better interfacial adhesion property between the anode, electrolyte and cathode; and improved layer thickness uniformity. In this work, a cell-stack was fabricated on porous ceramic flattened tube supports using decalcomania paper, which consists of an anode, electrolyte, and a cathode. The anode layer was 40μm thick, and was porous. The electrolyte layers exhibited a uniform thickness of about 20μm with a dense structure. Interfacial adhesion was improved due to the dense structure. The cathode layers was 30μm thick with porous structure, good adhesion to the electrolyte. The ohmic resistance levels at 800, 750 and 700˚C were measured, showing values of 1.49, 1.58 and 1.65Ω·cm2, respectively. The polarization resistances at 800, 750 and 700˚C were measured to be 1.63, 2.61 and 4.17cm2, respectively. These lower resistance values originated from the excellent interfacial adhesion between the anode, electrolyte and cathode. In a two-cell-stack SOFC, open-circuit voltages(OCVs) of 1.915, 1.942 and 1.957 V and maximum power densities(MPD) of 289.9, 276.1 and 220.4mW/cm2 were measured at 800, 750 and 700˚C, respectively. The proposed fabrication technique using decalcomania paper was shown to be feasible for the easy fabrication of segmented-in-series flattened tube SOFCs.

La1-xSrxMnO3(LSM,0≤x≤0.5) powders as the air electrode for solid oxide fuel cell were synthesized by a glycine-nitrate combustion process. The powders were then examined by X-ray diffraction(XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The as-formed powders were composed of very fine ash particles linked together in chains. X-ray maps of the LSM powders milled for 1.5 h showed that the metallic elements are homogeneously distributed inside each grain and in the different grains. The powder XRD patterns of the LSM with x< 0.3 showed a rhombohedral phase; the phase changes to the cubic phase at higher compositions(x≥0.3) calcined in air at 1200˚C for 4 h. Also, the SEM micrographs showed that the average grain size decreases as Sr content increases. Composite air electrodes made of 50/50 vol% of the resulting LSM powders and yttria stabilized zirconia(YSZ) powders were prepared by colloidal deposition technique. The electrodes were studied by ac impedance spectroscopy in order to improve the performance of a solid oxide fuel cell(SOFC). Reproducible impedance spectra were confirmed using the improved cell, which consisted of LSM-YSZ/YSZ. The composite electrode of LSM and YSZ was found to yield a lower cathodic resistivity than that of the non-composite one. Also, the addition of YSZ to the La1-xSrxMnO3 (0.1≤x≤0.2) electrode led to a pronounced, large decrease in the cathodic resistivity of the LSM-YSZ composite electrodes.

Joining of NiO-YSZ to 316 stainless steel was carried out with B-Ni2 brazing alloy (3 wt% Fe, 4.5 wt% Si, 3.2 wt% B, 7 wt% Cr, Ni-balance, m.p. 971-) to seal the NiO-YSZ anode/316 stainless steel interconnect structure in a SOFC. In the present research, interfacial (chemical) reactions during brazing at the NiO-YSZ/316 stainless steel interconnect were enhanced by the two processing methods, a) addition of an electroless nickel plate to NiO-YSZ as a coating or b) deposition of titanium layer onto NiO-YSZ by magnetron plasma sputtering method, with process variables and procedures optimized during the pre-processing. Brazing was performed in a cold-wall vacuum furnace at . Post-brazing interfacial morphologies between NiO-YSZ and 316 stainless steel were examined by SEM and EDS methods. The results indicate that B-Ni2 brazing filler alloy was fused fully during brazing and continuous interfacial layer formation depended on the method of pre-coating NiO-YSZ. The inter-diffusion of elements was promoted by titanium-deposition: the diffusion reaction thickness of the interfacial area was reduced to less than 5 compared to 100 for electroless nickel-deposited NiO-YSZ cermet.

Dry Process(natural drying, hot-air drying, oil fry drying), optimized mixture ratio and the condition of carbonization was carried out in order to improve the product durability develop eco-friendly solid fuel mixing food waste and paper sludge. As a result of the experiment, oil fry drying process was the fastest method for drying food waste and paper sludge mixture that contains 80% water inside, and the optimized mixture ratio to minimize the generating concentration of chlorine gas against caloric value of mixture ratio was 7:3. Additionally proper temperature of product carbonization was about 200℃ and shown increasing product durability through the carbonization. Therefore, the pelletized solid fuel be shaped diameter around 0.5cm, length 2cm under which was pulverized and molded using 7:3 mixture of food waste, and paper sludge was the eco-friendly solid fuel possible to be industrialized which is consist of chlorine concentration of below 2.0wt% and the lowest caloric value of over 5,000kcal/kg. In conclusion, this developing manufacturing process of the solid fuel can be interpreted to contribute alternative energy development in accordance with low carbon and green growth era.

For this paper, we investigated the area specific resistance (ASR) of commercially available ferritic stainless steels with different chemical compositions for use as solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) interconnect. After 430h of oxidation, the STS446M alloy demonstrated excellent oxidation resistance and low ASR, of approximately 40 mΩcm2, of the thermally grown oxide scale, compared to those of other stainless steels. The reason for the low ASR is that the contact resistance between the Pt paste and the oxide scale is reduced due to the plate-like shape of the Cr2O3(s). However, the acceptable ASR level is considered to be below 100 mΩcm2 after 40,000 h of use. To further improve the electrical conductivity of the thermally grown oxide on stainless steels, the Co layer was deposited on the stainless steel by means of an electroless deposition method; it was then thermally oxidized to obtain the Co3O4 layer, which is a highly conductive layer. With the increase of the Co coating thickness, the ASR value decreased. For Co deposited STS444 with 2 μmhickness, the measured ASR at 800˚ after 300 h oxidation is around 10 mΩcm2, which is lower than that of the STS446M, which alloy has a lower ASR value than that of the non-coated STS. The reason for this improved high temperature conductivity seems to be that the Mn is efficiently diffused into the coating layer, which diffusion formed the highly conductive (Mn,Co)3O4 spinel phases and the thickness of the Cr2O3(S), which is the rate controlling layer of the electrical conductivity in the SOFC environment and is very thin