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Impact of Concrete Degradation on the Long-Term Safety of a Near-Surface Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility in Korea

The migration of radionuclides from radioactive waste into the environment poses a public safety concern. Thus, the long-term safety assessment for near-surface disposal sites for radioactive waste in South Korea entails providing reasonable assurance that the annual radiation dose exposure from radionuclide release from the waste repository into the biosphere will not exceed the regulatory limit of 0.1 mSv/yr. At the first near-surface disposal site in Gyeongju, concrete was a crucial component of the engineered barriers designed to contain radionuclides within the disposal site. The ability of concrete to retain radioactive waste within the disposal site is attributed to its high sorption capacity for radionuclides. However, research has shown that the degradation of concrete can affect its radionuclide retention capabilities, which are defined by sorption properties of distribution (Kd) and diffusion (Ds) coefficient parameters. As a result, changes in sorption properties may lead to radionuclides migrating out of the disposal vault. In light of the geochemical deterioration of engineered concrete barriers, this study assesses the long-term safety of near-surface disposal sites. To simulate the impact of concrete degradation on radionuclide migration, we employed RESRAD-OFFSITE’s extended source-term features, which can model the release of radionuclides from radioactive waste shielded by concrete barriers. Using carefully screened published sorption data of four radionuclides (14C, 137Cs, 90Sr and 99Tc) in different stages of concrete degradation, the results indicated that released radioactivity during the most degraded state of concrete will result in a maximum radiation exposure dose of 1.4 × 10−8 mSv/yr from 99Tc which is below the permissible limit of 0.1 mSv per year, thus demonstrating that concrete is a reliable component of the engineered designed barriers for near-surface disposal facilities.