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The pyroprocessing facilities at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute in Daejeon (Yonhap News)

There is growing anxiety among citizens of Daejeon about tests that are scheduled to begin next year involving spent nuclear fuel, which is a form of high-level radioactive waste.

Spent nuclear fuel refers to remains of nuclear fuel that has been irradiated to produce nuclear power and is then removed from the nuclear reactor. It is fatal to living creatures because of the powerful radiation and the intense heat that it releases.

Advocacy groups in the Daejeon area are strongly opposed to the idea of conducting experiments downtown that carry the risk of radioactive exposure or explosions.

“The problem is that this technological research is going ahead without the slightest assessment process despite safety concerns. The experiments on spent nuclear fuel reprocessing and the development of a sodium-cooled fast reactor must be stopped because the lives of Daejeon citizens are at stake,” said the Daejeon Coalition of Civic Groups and Daejeon Joint Action for a Society Without Nuclear Power on June 28.

Starting next year, the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, located in the Deokjin neighborhood of the Yuseong district of Daejeon, is planning to run experiments on pyroprocessing (dry reprocessing) in order to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. It also intends to move forward with the development of an experimental sodium-cooled fast reactor that would use reprocessed nuclear fuel. These experiments and development projects are designed to reduce the amount of spent nuclear fuel.

Pyroprocessing is a technology for extracting uranium from spent nuclear fuel through electrochemical processing. In contrast with wet reprocessing, which is the technique generally used for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, pyroprocessing is unlikely to be used to extract pure plutonium, the primary raw material for making nuclear weapons.

The revised nuclear agreement that the US and South Korea reached on Nov. 25 of last year allows the first phase of pyroprocessing experiments using spent nuclear fuels to take place in South Korea, and the institute is planning to start conducting these experiments next year. The institute has already run preliminary pyroprocessing experiments using mock spent nuclear fuel.

The institute currently has in its possession around 3 tons of spent fuel rods that was transferred from nuclear reactors in the area. It intends to use the rods in the experiments starting next year.

The Daejeon Coalition of Civic Groups and other groups warned that if an unforeseen accident occurs in the process of pyroprocessing experiments working directly with spent nuclear fuel, it could present an immense risk to the entire city

But the position of the institute is that using spent nuclear fuel in experiments does not present any safety concerns.

“The spent nuclear fuel is hot at first, but after 10 years there is a marked decrease in the amount of heat produced, while radioactivity remains high. The risk of an explosion is not as great as people generally think, and since the tests are carried out in a completely closed space, there is virtually no risk of radioactive exposure,” said Ahn Do-hee, director of the institute’s nuclear fuel cycle development team.

There are also safety concerns about the sodium-cooled fast reactor that the institute is working to develop. After receiving approval for the reactor‘s design plan next year, the institute aims to complete construction by 2028.

“Since the sodium that would be used as a coolant is liable to explode if it comes into contact with oxygen in the water or air, this is considered a potential cause of a nuclear catastrophe,” the Daejeon Coalition of Civic Groups said.

“The greatest challenge of the sodium-cooled fast reactor is what should be done to prevent [the sodium] from encountering air or water while the reactor is running. In order to solve this process, we will create compartments around the reactor containing the sodium and fill those compartments with argon. If we successfully develop this facility, the technical likelihood of sodium coming into contact with oxygen is virtually nil,” said Park Won-seok, who is in charge of the institute’s sodium-cooled fast reactor development team.

By Choi Ye-rin, Daejeon correspondent

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