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Characteristic and remediation of radioactive soil in nuclear facility sites: a critical review

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Abstract

A huge amount of radioactive soil has been generated through decommissioning of nuclear facilities around the world. This review focuses on the difficulties and complexities associated with the remediation of radioactive soils at the site level; therefore, laboratory studies were excluded from this review. The problems faced while remediating radioactive soils using techniques based on strategies such as dry separation, soil washing, flotation separation, thermal desorption, electrokinetic remediation, and phytoremediation are discussed, along with appropriate examples. Various factors such as soil type, particle size, the fraction of fine particles, and radionuclide characteristics that strongly influence radioactive soil decontamination processes are highlighted. In this review, we also survey and compare the pool of available technologies currently being used for the remediation of radionuclide-contaminated soils, as well as the economic aspects of soil remediation using different techniques. This review demonstrates the importance of the integrated role of various factors in determining the effectiveness of the radioactive soil decontamination process.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIP) (No. 2017M2A8A5015148 and No. 2017M2A8A1092471).

Funding

National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korean government (MSIP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Decommissioning Technology Research Division, Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, 989-111, Daedeokdae-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, 34057, Republic of Korea

    In-Ho Yoon, Chan Woo Park, Ilgook Kim, Hee-Man Yang, Sung-Man Kim & June-Hyun Kim

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  1. In-Ho Yoon
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  2. Chan Woo Park
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  3. Ilgook Kim
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  4. Hee-Man Yang
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  5. Sung-Man Kim
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. In-Ho Yoon: conceptualization, supervision, writing, project administration, and funding acquisition; Chan Woo Park: investigation, data curation, and validation; Il-Gook Kim: investigation, data curation, and methodology; Hee-Man Yang: resources and investigation; Sung-Man Kim: resources and validation; June-Hyun Kim: resources and investigation.

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Correspondence to In-Ho Yoon.

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Yoon, IH., Park, C.W., Kim, I. et al. Characteristic and remediation of radioactive soil in nuclear facility sites: a critical review. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 67990–68005 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16782-2

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