By Kim Hyun-cheol
Staff Reporter

South Korea will select the locations for 11 additional nuclear power plants next year at the earliest.

Candidate locations will be selected as soon as studies by the Korea Power Engineering Company and the Korea Research Institute for Human Settlements are completed at the end of this year, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said Monday.

As energy demand continues to rise, the government plans to add the 11 new plants to the current 20 plants in operation and eight more to be built later.

However, venues at existing stations don't have sufficient room for additional facilities, with only six more available, at the Gori plants in Busan and the Uljin plants in North Gyeongsang Province.

Considering it usually takes about 12 years from securing the site for a nuclear plant to the completion of its construction, the search for the remaining five locations needs to be done as soon as possible, the ministry said.

``Sites for the new power generation facilities will be confirmed by 2012,'' an official of the ministry said.

Finalized selection from two or three candidate sites will be done through public discussions scheduled for next year, he added.

Korea ranks sixth in terms of energy produced by nuclear reactors after the United States, France, Japan, Russia and Germany. Nuclear power plants provide over 36 percent of the country's electric power supply, compared to the world's average of 15.7 percent.

The average operational rate of the country's 20 commercial reactors is estimated to have reached 93.4 percent last year, up from 90.3 percent in 2007, according to data from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

The figure is also higher than the 91 percent and 76 percent of the United States and France, respectively, the world's top two nuclear energy users.

Controversies, however, are likely to continue over the influence and credibility of the reactors with opposition from local residents and environmental activists.

Earlier this year, the government said it will restart a 30-year-old nuclear reactor in Gori, the first and the oldest in Korea, despite concerns on safety. So far this year, operations have been halted four times in three reactors at three different sites.

hckim@koreatimes.co.kr