Nuclear-power jitters spread to South Korea
SEOUL — For Seoul residents, South Korea’s decision to keep four nuclear reactors off-line because of faked safety reports means power shortages, and a summer of sweltering homes and offices. Lee Jin Gon has bigger concerns.
“We feel unsafe day and night,” Lee said, pointing at the cause of his nervousness, one of the closed reactors in the town of Yangnam, a fourhour journey southeast of the capital. “We became worried about nuclear safety after the Fukushima accident. Now it’s worse,” he said, adding that locals have held protests to close the whole plant.
Lee, 60, is emblematic of growing opposition to atomic power in South Korea, a movement galvanized by the meltdown of three reactors in neighbouring Japan’s Fukushima in 2011. It gained more support when an investigation found nuclear plants were using components with faked safety certificates. That cost Kim Kyun Seop his job as head of state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., which runs the 23 operating reactors.
The anti-nuclear lobby is forcing South Korean President Park Geun-hye to take note. Her administration said it will review the role of nuclear power to reflect “social acceptability” in its energy plan due by the end of this year. The government had planned to build more reactors to cope with electricity demand it forecast to surge almost 60 per cent by 2027.
Surveys show nuclear power is becoming increasingly socially unacceptable. Sixtythree per cent of respondents to a March survey by pollster Hangil Research said they consider domestic reactors unsafe. That compared with 54 per cent in a year earlier poll by the non-profit Korean Federation for Environmental Movement.
In Yangnam, Lee, head of the local branch of Nonghyup, the nationwide co-operative federation of farmers, says concern that nuclear power isn’t safe is damaging sales of the area’s rice and other farm produce.
“No one wants to come here to live,” Lee said in an interview at his office in the town 180 kilometres from Seoul. “We’re being isolated.”
As in Japan, South Korea began building nuclear plants decades ago to provide a stable source of energy to spur economic growth, and reduce reliance on imports of oil and coal.
The current president’s father, the military ruler Park Chung Hee, commissioned the first reactor Kori No. 1, which began operations in 1978.
Twenty-two more have been built since, providing about 30 per cent of the country’s electricity. Five are under construction with plans for another six by 2024. All are run by Korea Hydro, whose parent is Korea Electric Power Corp., which in turn is the monopoly distributor of electricity.
When former South Korean president Lee Myung-bak in 2008 said nuclear plants would supply 59 per cent of the nation’s power by 2030 from 36 per cent, his administration called it “an inevitable choice” in the face of high oil prices and to reduce carbon emissions.
To bolster the case for atomic power’s efficiency and low cost, the government said consumer prices had almost tripled over the previous 25 years, while electricity bills had only climbed 11.4 per cent.
Critics say those statistics are misleading because the government controls power prices and sets them at lower rates than the cost of producing the electricity.
“The unreasonable price structure of electricity is the key cause of Korea’s frequent power shortages,” said Yun Won Cheol, an economics and finance professor at Hanyang University in Seoul.
With the shutdowns of some reactors in May, demand may exceed supply by 1.98 gigawatts during peak demand periods in August, “an unprecedented level,” the energy ministry said on May 31.
The nation issued a preliminary warning Thursday for a possible power shortage, according to the Korea Power Exchange. That leaves the government focused on curbing consumption to prevent blackouts.
The government now needs to focus on alternative energy, said Kim Ik Jung, a microbiology professor at Dongguk University and head of research at Gyeongju Environmental Movement Federation.