Abstract
Storage facilities are filling up at South Korea’s nuclear power plants, making spent fuel management a hot-button issue. But so far, attempts to create additional storage sites have foundered, largely because of a failure to consult with communities that would be affected, and because of widespread belief that nuclear power plants and storage facilities in South Korea are not safe. In recent surveys, the authors found that these communities might respond positively to educational efforts that explain how spent nuclear fuel could be safely stored.
Keywords
To understand the politics and controversy surrounding commercial nuclear power and the storage of spent nuclear fuel in South Korea, one must know some of the politics of nuclear weapons in East Asia. North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests during the past nine years. As a result, about two-thirds of South Koreans interviewed for a 2005 opinion poll supported the development of a national nuclear deterrent against North Korea. 1 Since then, leading mainstream media columnists and conservative politicians have increasingly called for open debate about South Korea’s potential future as a nuclear weapons country (Kim, 2011). As a result, ongoing controversy over storage of spent fuel produced by South Korea’s nuclear power plants has become conflated with an interest in reprocessing that spent fuel to obtain separated plutonium for a nuclear deterrent.
South Koreans are well aware that Japan has been engaged for decades in both uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, accumulating some 47 tons of separated weapon-useable plutonium, with 10 tons stored in Japan and 37 tons in England and France (Japan Times, 2014). Many South Koreans see Japan as posing a potential threat at least as great as the one emanating from communist North Korea and believe that South Korea must prepare itself for a possible nightmare scenario: isolation among nuclear-armed neighbors. 2
In light of Japan’s plutonium stores, many South Koreans argue that their country has a sovereign right—just like Japan—to reprocess spent nuclear fuel to help ease the country’s spent fuel storage problem and to provide plutonium to fuel nuclear power plants. Some have also persistently asserted a right to
Alongside this discussion of a future of spent fuel reprocessing and nuclear weapons, there is widespread concern within the country about the safety of the nuclear power plants already operating. A telephone survey on nuclear power conducted by the Korea Nuclear Energy Promotion Agency in May 2014 revealed that about 75 percent of its 1,000 respondents said that nuclear power is necessary but only about 30 percent said that nuclear power plants are safe. 3
South Korea now has 23 nuclear reactors in operation, discharging about 760 metric tons of spent fuel each year. 4 Among the by-products of nuclear fission are 6,541 tons of heavy metal that, as of the end of 2013, were stored in spent fuel storage facilities at nuclear power plants clustered in four coastal sites.
By 2035, the government plans to have 16 more reactors online, bringing the country’s total nuclear generating capacity to 42.7 gigawatts (Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, 2014). Analysts estimate that more than 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel will be generated over the extended lifetimes of the 35 pressurized water reactors and four heavy water reactors that are to be deployed by 2035. 5
As the existing reactor storage pools fill up, spent fuel management has become a hot-button issue in South Korea. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP), South Korea’s electric-power utility, asserted in 2008 that the spent fuel storage capacity at four reactor sites would be exhausted between 2016 and 2021 (Park, 2008). 6 Subsequent assessments suggest that storage methods could be changed to expand the capacity of on-site storage facilities somewhat. But there are many complications involved in calculating just how existing sites can continue to accept all the spent nuclear fuel produced by South Korea’s nuclear power plants.
In any event it is clear that additional storage for spent nuclear fuel is needed. So far, attempts to create additional storage sites have foundered, largely because of a failure to properly consult with communities that would be affected, and because of widespread belief that nuclear power plants and storage facilities in South Korea are not safe. In recent surveys, we found that these communities may respond positively to educational efforts that explain how additional storage for spent nuclear fuel might be safely implemented.
Lessons from the past
Research on two types of nuclear waste repositories—a centralized, interim storage facility for spent fuel from nuclear power plants and one site for disposal of low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste—began in South Korea in 1986. In 1988, the Korean Atomic Energy Commission said that a repository not located on the site of a nuclear power plant would be completed by the end of 1997. The plan failed eventually, mainly because of opposition from communities near potential repository sites. Ever since, there have been no serious attempts to create a nuclear waste repository.
In 1996, the responsibility for radioactive waste management was transferred first to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and then to the Korea Electric Power Company, or KEPCO. In September 1998, the Atomic Energy Commission announced that a low- and intermediate-level waste repository would be completed by 2008, with an interim spent fuel storage facility to be built nearby in the ensuing eight years.
Because of adamant opposition in potential hosting communities and other difficulties, the Atomic Energy Commission eventually separated the low- and intermediate-level waste facility from spent fuel storage, winning local endorsement for low- and intermediate-level disposition in the southeastern city of Gyeongju. This success was the product of thorough and transparent consultation with local government, financial incentives for communities that volunteered to serve as a site for the facility (300 billion won, or about $270 million), and the relocation of KHNP’s headquarters to the city that agreed to host the facility (Feiveson et al., 2011).
Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the United Kingdom have had similar experiences in siting nuclear waste repositories. These countries took years, even decades, to understand that it was not scientific persuasion or the will of the government but consultation with local communities that finally led to workable site solutions.
In retrospect, however, it’s clear that South Korea reverted to the top-down track when it came to choosing a site for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy formed a new committee in July 2009 to manage the spent fuel public process but the committee was suspended without explanation a month later. Instead, several individuals from South Korea’s nuclear establishment were entrusted with a research project on the matter (Feiveson et al., 2011). The group’s August 2011 report recommended as a basis for the public consensus process considering near-, mid-, and long-term spent fuel management options, conducting an in-depth review, and establishing a management roadmap (Korea Radioactive Waste Management Corporation, 2011).
Eventually, in 2013 the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy embraced the concept of public and stakeholder engagement and set up the Public Engagement Commission on Spent Nuclear Fuel Management (PECOS) to lead the public engagement and stakeholder consultation process. But since its inception PECOS has been remarkably passive in engaging local communities.
A public engagement commission with little engagement
Rising concerns about nuclear safety in South Korea are closely related to a series of corruption scandals regarding replacement parts, operational safety problems, and the cover-up of nuclear accidents during the past several years. In October 2014 residents of Samcheok City, which borders the Hanul Nuclear Power Plant on the eastern coast of South Korea, held a referendum on the central government’s plan to build two 1,500-megawatt nuclear power reactors in the city. In the plebiscite 84.9 percent of voters opposed the government’s plan. Although the committee that organized the plebiscite did not have any legal status, the city used this result as the basis for an official document asking the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to cancel the plan (Hwang, 2014).
Residents’ concerns about nuclear power plant safety are also shown in ongoing battles between the central and local governments over a decision on whether to decommission or extend the life of the reactors at the Kori and Wolsong nuclear power plants in southeast South Korea. Wolsong residents started raising their voices against life extension again after the disclosure of an accident in which a spent fuel bundle had been dropped (Lee, 2014). On February 27, 2015 the Korean Nuclear Safety and Security Commission approved a 10-year extension of operation for Wolsong Unit 1, but the extension is strongly opposed by local residents, antinuclear nongovernmental organizations, and the opposition party. In the case of the Kori reactor, local civic groups and the City Council of Busan—South Korea’s second-largest city—formally requested that the reactor there be decommissioned in June 2017 when it reaches the end of its 10-year extension past the plant’s 30-year design lifetime (Park, 2014.).
In October 2013, given the increasing urgency of dealing with the long-term radioactive waste management problem, South Korea’s government launched PECOS to consult with stakeholders and make recommendations on options for resolving the spent fuel problem by the end of 2014 (Hong, 2014). PECOS has 13 members, including specialists in energy, the social sciences, and conflict management; representatives from nongovernmental organizations; and representatives recommended by heads of local governments in the regions that host nuclear power plants. The launch of PECOS could be a way to end two decades of impasse over the South Korean spent nuclear fuel management program.
As of mid-March 2015 PECOS has made little progress in actually engaging with the local communities that host South Korea’s nuclear power plants. The commission wasted precious time introducing spent nuclear fuel issues to its members and debating what to do among themselves, instead of providing information to local residents in regions near nuclear power plants or collecting extensive opinions from all walks of life in those locales. When it became evident that PECOS would fail to produce any specific spent fuel recommendation by the end of 2014, its end date was extended through June 2015. So far, civic groups and local people alike have responded frostily to PECOS, in part because of the government’s requirement that the group find a solution within a year and a half to a problem that has festered for decades.
In visits to South Korea’s nuclear power plant communities, we confirmed that the general apprehension about the safety of nuclear power plants has spilled over to affect residents’ attitudes about spent fuel management issues. In all the sites we visited, local opinion leaders expressed their concerns about the safety of spent fuel management in addition to their concern for the overall safety of the nuclear power plant operations. They made it clear that any decision to address the spent fuel storage problem needed to include measures to ensure that the storage is safe.
Engaging the missing link: Local residents
To see how residents near nuclear power plant sites viewed the hot-potato problem of spent-fuel policy, we surveyed them in regard to their awareness of issues relating to nuclear spent fuel stored in their areas. We also provided nonpartisan scientific information about nuclear spent fuel including its physical and chemical nature, the available methods for storing it, and the probable social and economic impact on residents near nuclear power plant sites. Then we tried to measure the impact of this information on their opinions about spent fuel issues in South Korea.
In April 2014, we conducted an initial telephone survey of 2,000 residents in four nuclear power plant host regions. The questionnaire tried to determine what the respondents knew about the impending exhaustion of the power plants’ current spent fuel storage pool capacity, options for where additional storage could be built after the pools filled up, possible compensation to residents near the selected storage sites, and so on. 7
The survey showed that more than half of the respondents did not know that the power plants’ spent fuel storage pools were nearly full. Less than a quarter of respondents would choose to shut down the plants when their current storage pools were full. Among those who replied that nuclear power plants should operate even after the storage pools fill up, about 42 percent felt that additional storage should not be built on their nuclear power plant sites. With regard to storage methods, dry cask storage won over the current pool storage by a big margin. 8 When asked whether special compensation should be given to those living near nuclear power plants if additional on-site storage were built, 90 percent answered positively, with more respondents preferring indirect rewards, such as welfare facilities in the community, over direct monetary rewards. 9
After the initial survey, we randomly selected focus groups composed of people living near the nuclear power plants for education on spent fuel issues. We had access to residents around three of the four sites and made two visits, one in June and one in September/October 2014. We presented an hour and a half of lectures and a question-and-answer session at each visit, concerning the current state of spent fuel management in South Korea. Unfortunately, we were unable to gather a statistically significant number of participants at any of the sites. 10 Nevertheless their opinions seem worth noting.
More than 80 percent of those attending the first round of educational lectures said afterwards that they understood the problem relating to the saturation of on-site storage capacity. Those in favor of additional spent fuel storage on site increased from 33 percent in the initial survey to 47 percent after the first round of education. Support for dry storage in the initial telephone survey was 53 percent overall, and the figure increased by 21 percentage points after the first round of education. Most dry storage supporters said they were influenced by information they received about pool storage during the Fukushima accident in our education sessions. Two-thirds of the attendees confirmed that they had not had any opportunity to learn about the nature of the spent fuel issue before our sessions.
The solution? Believable information
Residents who live near nuclear power plants are anxious about the dangers of those facilities but their general level of understanding about nuclear spent fuel issues is low. The reasons are manifold but the primary cause seems to be that the government has not given residents sufficient balanced information about the urgency of the need for additional spent fuel storage facilities in South Korea.
Having spent the whole of 2014 debating options for spent fuel management among its own membership, PECOS has finally begun to reach out to communities that host nuclear power plants as its closing date approaches. PECOS tried to make use of the special committee of representatives from nuclear power plant regions to listen to local voices and mobilize local support. The problem this time though was that the special committee, consisting of representatives recommended by heads of local governments in regions with nuclear power plants, was in accord with neither PECOS nor the local public.
As we noted above, residents living near nuclear power plants have high safety concerns but their knowledge of spent fuel storage issues is relatively low. They have rarely been exposed to unbiased information on the matter. PECOS is expected—and ought—to reach out to local voices and the intricate web of diverse interests at each of the nuclear power plant sites, to provide objective facts regarding spent fuel. The public engagement commission should also provide such information to the general public.
South Korea is at a critical moment in its two-decade-long journey toward a long-term solution for its spent nuclear fuel storage problem. Success in choosing a site for storage of the high-level radioactive waste produced by nuclear power plants will depend on winning over the communities that live near that site. Obtaining such agreement would be difficult under any circumstances because of the conflicting interests among concerned parties in the extremely politicized spent fuel public process. Consequently, creating a public consensus on storage siting will be especially difficult. Educational information provided by experts independent of the government seems to be an effective way to impart understanding of the spent fuel storage situation and the options for creating safe and secure repositories. Truly independent experts could increase the level of intelligent science-based discourse at the local level and make the national spent fuel management debate more rational.
Funding
This article was prepared with support from the MacArthur Foundation.