The Nuclear Safety and Security Commission on Thursday authorized the operation of a storage facility for low- and medium-level radioactive waste in Gyeongju, some 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul. The nation’s first nuclear waste disposal facility will go into operation by the end of this year at the earliest, 28 years after Korea began to push for the construction of such a facility.
The operation of the permanent storage facility carries great significance, given that Seoul had to change its candidate site as many as nine times amid fierce protests by residents and anti-nuclear activists.
Construction of the disposal site, which can store 100,000 drums of low- and medium-level radioactive waste underground, was completed in June after seven years, but its operation has been delayed pending the nuclear inspection body’s safety assessment. The facility, which was designed to resist an earthquake of up to magnitude 6.5, could store up to 800,000 drums of waste if its expansion plan proceeds on schedule.
The completion of such a disposal facility, which is not common even globally, will provide great leeway for the nation’s nuclear power plants, which have wrestled with the near saturation of their temporary storage spaces.
The facility also deserves credit in that it will set a good example to the NIMBY (not in my back yard) syndrome entrenched across the nation, although there have been massive state subsidies and regional support programs.
Also, the project enabled Korea to accumulate knowhow with respect to the disposal of radioactive waste, raising hopes of winning more nuclear power projects abroad. That’s because Korea, the world’s fifth-largest user of nuclear power, will be able to offer a package deal ― from the construction of nuclear reactors, to nuclear waste disposal, to possibly the dismantling of nuclear power plants.
But the nation’s more formidable task is to find a solution for its spent nuclear fuel, the high-level waste that should be stored separately because of its high risk. Korea has 23 nuclear reactors that supply about one third of its electric power and produce about 750 tons of spent fuel each year. As of the end of last year, about 13,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel was kept at temporary storage pools at nuclear plants with some sites expected to be full by the end of 2016.
The government launched a public engagement commission consisting of nuclear experts, professors and officials in October last year to take account of public opinion on spent fuel, but little has been done so far. The commission failed to even decide on how to store the spent fuel and only agreed to extend the deadline for its operation to June of next year from the end of this year.
Yet this is no time for the commission to do nothing without even holding a public hearing for more than a year. Certainly, the spent nuclear fuel issue is never optional because we must build storage sites for it even if we stop nuclear power generation right now. The government should explain the circumstances facing the nation to the people with sincerity and hurry to make a final decision.