Nuclear-exit policy places extra burden on S. Korean taxpayers

By Lim Chang-won Posted : October 25, 2018, 09:54 Updated : October 25, 2018, 09:54

[Yeongheung Power Station]


SEOUL -- President Moon Jae-in's campaign to replace fossil-fueled power plants with clean and renewable energy sources requires a whopping amount of state money, but it may place an extra burden on South Korean taxpayers for after treatment, according to a government report released by a ruling party legislator in a parliamentary committee.

Data presented by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy showed that South Korea needs a total cost of some 100.6 trillion won ($88.3 billion) to seal reactors and manage spent fuel and radioactive waste. The amount of money Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP), the state-run operator of nuclear power plants, has accumulated to date is only 19.3 trillion won or 19.2 percent.

About 64.1 trillion won is required for the management of spent fuel, 10.9 trillion won for the safe storage of low and mid-level radioactive waste and 25.6 trillion won for the dismantlement of reactors.

For decades, South Korea, which has almost no reserves of fossil fuels on its territory, has pushed for a nuclear energy program. However, public concerns over their safety grew following Japan's 2011 nuclear meltdown in Fukushima that drew unwelcome attention to the use of nuclear energy.

Moon has unveiled a new energy roadmap calling for an injection of about 110 trillion won into renewable energy by 2030. The life cycle of existing reactors will not be extended to decrease the number of nuclear power plants from 24 to 14 in 2038. An old reactor in Gori near the southeastern port of Busan was shut down in June 2017. Another reactor in Gyeongju faces permanent closure and KHNP agreed in June to abandon the planned construction of four new plants.

An independent public commission, which conducted a field study, has recommended a quick solution to piles of spent fuel rods. But there has been no clear answer from policymakers to address concerns about the management of spent fuel, which has been a stringent issue because Washington refused to revise a 2015 accord that has effectively restricted the development of reprocessing facilities to acquire enriched uranium as fuel.

The 2015 deal only allows South Korea to conduct research into "pyroprocessing," a new unverified technology considered largely proliferation-resistant since the product is thermally and radioactively far too hot to use for a weapon.

Wary of potential proliferation, Washington has insisted that wider concessions on reprocessing could complicate efforts to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. South Korea has been on watch by the nonproliferation community because of its covert nuclear program in the 1970s.
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