KEPCO hit by safety lapses at UAE nuke plant site

Construction continues on a nuclear power plant in Barakah, the United Arab Emirates. The Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) and its contractors have been working on the $20 billion project to build four reactors since December 2009. / Courtesy of KEPCO

By Lee Hyo-sik

The Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) has been struggling to deal with the deaths of workers and other safety lapses at a nuclear reactor construction site in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Workplace safety problems have raised concerns that the already delayed $20 billion project could be further postponed, adversely affecting KEPCO’s plan to secure additional deals in the UAE and other Middle Eastern nations.

The state-run utility confirmed Wednesday that a worker hired by its subcontractors died last November at the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) site. Six months earlier, two laborers died and three others were injured after they fell from a high-rise crane.

Following the May incident, KEPCO asked U.S. engineering firm Bechtel in July to check site safety. Bechtel reported that the site scored only 78 points out of 100, indicating that KEPCO and its contractors largely failed to ensure worker safety.

KEPCO admitted it could have managed the site better, expressing regret for the deaths of several workers.

“We asked Bechtel to review the safety of the Barakah site last July and got lower scores than initially expected,” a KEPCO official said. “Its findings basically indicate that there is room for us to improve the safety of our workers. They don’t necessarily mean we failed to do our job.”

He said KEPCO, with the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Corp. and other partners, will hold more safety training sessions for workers and strengthen safety guidelines.

“We have always been placing top priority on ensuring worker safety,” the official said. “It is unfortunate that laborers lost their lives. To prevent the further loss of human lives, we will do whatever it takes to make the construction site safer.”

KEPCO signed a contract with the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp. in December 2009 to build four nuclear reactors at Barakah, 270 kilometers west of Abu Dhabi, by May 2020.

The plant, on a 12.5 square-kilometer site, will generate 5,600 megawatts of electricity. It will be the Middle East’s first nuclear power plant.

KEPCO last October won a $49.4 billion contract to operate the plant for 60 years.

Initially, BNPP’s No. 1 reactor was expected to be operational by May 2017 and the remaining three would go into operation by May 2020. But the timeline has been pushed back.

Two local builders _ Hyundai Engineering & Construction and Samsung Construction & Trade _ have been constructing the reactors and other facilities, employing more than 17,000 laborers from the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and other developing countries.

More than 3,000 Koreans, including 520 from KEPCO, have been sent to the plant’s desert site.

KEPCO has been looking for additional deals in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and other countries in the region.