원자력 발전소 해체 과정의 쟁점 : 미국과의 비교를 중심으로

Korea is one of world’s leading nuclear power generation countries, but decomissioning of nuclear power plants will be the conundrum of next decades when Korea’s commercial nuclear reactor faces life expectancy of design as Gory Unit 1 shows. Management of Nuclear Spent Fuel lies at the core of that conundrum and this complicated problem is aggravated when saturation of Spent Fuel Fool which is storing spent fuel from operating nuclear reactors is approaching. This article deals with the issues in the process of decommissioning the nuclear power plants, comparing with experiences of U.S. which is the leading country in the world in commercial nuclear power plants and had and has decommissioned numerous nuclear power plants. This article starts with general landscape of U.S. nuclear power plant decommissioning process which adopts mainly SAFSTOR method. There after this article details issues related role and function of main regulatory agency-The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission(hereafter ‘NRC’)- and how the management of spent nuclear has evolved from seeking a deep geological nuclear repository based on Yucca Mountain’s status as a likely candidate to the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation based on interim dry cask storages. Also, this article contrasts U.S experiences with weakness and necessity of improvement in Nuclear Safety and Security Commission which is corresponding NRC in Korea and problems of seeking a deep geological nuclear repository in Korea. Considering on U.S. experiences, the current regulatory framework and future policies related with decommission of nulcear power plants in Korea needs more research.