Head of Panel on Spent Nuclear Fuel Resigns Suddenly
The head of the government commission in charge of spent nuclear fuel management policy review suddenly resigned on June 26, saying that discussions in the absence of locals and civic organizations would lead to fairness-related problems down the road. The South Korean government’s spent nuclear fuel disposal policy has come to a halt under the circumstances.
After his resignation, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy released a statement to say that it is civic groups against nuclear power that are refusing to join the discussions. It also stressed that a new commissioner would be elected on July 1 and an open forum would be held next month so that opinions on the issue can be smoothly collected. The 15-member commission was set up in May last year and currently has four vacancies.
The South Korean government is failing in spent nuclear fuel disposal policy organization. The commission released an expert group discussion result in March this year as a sort of guidelines for discussions with the general public. However, the expert group discussion result just reiterated the principle that spent nuclear fuel needs to be permanently disposed of and specified nothing about additional MACSTOR construction, the safety of deep underground disposal, and many other controversial details.
Additional MACSTOR construction in Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant Units 2 to 4 is being delayed with the public discussions failing. According to Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the saturation level of the temporary storage facilities of the units topped 94 percent late last year and construction of at least seven new facilities has to be started in August this year. The three units will have to be stopped if opinions continue to clash. The three units generated no less than 13.06 billion kwh of electricity in 2019 alone.