hankyoreh

By Hwangbo Yon, staff reporter

The government’s second basic energy plan for 2014-2035, adopted by the Cabinet on Jan. 14, confirms a policy of addressing energy needs with more nuclear power plants.

The plan’s adoption shows the government’s intention to continue building plants in spite of the people’s safety concerns, which have escalated in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. If the plan goes into effect, the number of nuclear reactors in South Korea would increase from 23 today to around 39 by 2035.

Basic energy plans, which are drafted every five years, show the government’s approach to mid- and long-term energy policy. In the first basic national energy plan in 2008, the Lee Myung-bak administration, which advocated a greater reliance on nuclear power in response to rising oil prices and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, said it planned to eventually have nuclear power account for 41% of all power generation.

But calls for more reliance on nuclear power largely petered out after the 2011 catastrophe at Fukushima.

Before developing the second plan, the government held discussions last year to “gather a wide range of opinions” through a civilian-government working group, which includes participants from industry, civic groups, and universities. Sources reported a tense face-off early on in the working group’s nuclear power subcommittee, pitting civic groups - who demanded that nuclear power reliance be cut to 7% - against economic ones, which insisted on keeping the 41% target.

Later discussions narrowed the gap to roughly 20-35%, and the working group finally produced a recommendation advising that nuclear power reliance be cut to 22-29%. Factoring into the decision were negative popular opinion about nuclear power and the conflicts that have erupted during the past several years over the building of electricity transmission lines, which would need to be added if more nuclear power plants are built.

But the working group’s recommendation to reduce nuclear power reliance from the levels in the first plan transformed - due to inflated government predictions of power demand and high power facility reserve rate targets - into a call to build more nuclear reactors. By predicting a steep annual consumption rise of 2.5% and setting a 22% target rate for facility reserves, it increased the common denominator: power plant capacity.

“Setting a 22% power facilities reserve rate to prepare for demand peaks that come just a few times a year is overinvestment, pure and simple,” said Yang-Lee Won-young, the director of the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement energy and climate team and a participant in the nuclear power subcommittee discussions.

Starting at a National Assembly hearing in November 2013, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, which supervises the project, made no secret of its plans to have the government’s plan incorporate the higher recommended reliance rate of 29%. The administration’s argument is that energy security, industry competitiveness, and greenhouse gas reduction concerns leave nuclear power the only reasonable option. Its position was apparently influenced by the ruling Saenuri Party (NFP), which is calling for a nuclear power reliance rate of around one-third, and industry, which has benefited from cheap nuclear energy, with its lower costs. This also explains why the administration, which initially said it would discuss the number of nuclear power plans in the basic power supply plan, began stressing the need for 7GW of new nuclear power supplies by the later stages of the plan’s development.

Civic groups have lashed out at the plan for more nuclear power. Greenpeace, a global environmental group, released a statement on Jan. 14 saying that South Korea’s “large scale of nuclear power, high rate of operation, various improprieties in operation and lax approach to security present considerable potential for a large-scale accident. Now people will not be free from those concerns for at least the next 70 years.”

Any additional plants built after 2020 would not reach the end of their lifespans until at least 2080, the group explained.

Many say the plants to build even more nuclear power plants in South Korea, which already has the highest density of them in the world, is unrealistic in light of resident reactions and the issue of power lines. The government’s plan would require building five new plants in addition to the five that are currently under construction (a second reactor at Shin Wolseong, a third and fourth at Shin Kori, and a first and second at Shin Hanul) and another six for which construction plans have been set (fifth through eighth reactors at Shin Kori, third and fourth at Shin Hanul). Already, residents of designated sites like Samcheok and Yeongdeok are up in arms.

“Following the government’s plan would require building at least two new large-scale power lines through the Taebaek Mountains,” explained Lee Heon-seok, head of the group Energy Justice Actions. “The question is whether that’s really feasible.”

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