Five senior engineers at the Gori-1 nuclear power plant were indicted Wednesday for allegedly attempting to cover up a blackout at the oldest nuclear facility in South Korea in February, prosecutors said.
One of Gori's two reactors lost power for 12 minutes on Feb. 9 during a safety inspection. The power cut did not lead to any accidents, but it didn't come to light until March and regulators found that some senior engineers had covered it up for more than a month.
Prosecutors launched a probe into the Gori-1 officials in early April and indicted five engineers, including a 55-year-old chief engineer, who is only identified by his surname Moon, on charges of violating laws on nuclear safety.
Shortly after the blackout, the five engineers gathered at a main controlling room and decided to cover the incident up because of expected disciplinary action and public criticism for their failure to appropriately cope with the incident, prosecutors said.
At the time of the blackout, an emergency back-up diesel generator also failed, but they did not fix it until Feb. 13 because if they had repaired the back-up generator, it would have revealed the power cut.
Also on Feb. 10, they removed nuclear fuel inside the Gori reactor, despite the failure of the emergency generator, a major wrongdoing in what prosecutors described as "total safety insensitivity" among Gori officials.
"Although there is no immediate meltdown at the reactor when an electricity supply is halted, there is the need for an emergency generator in case of emergency," said Lee Joon-seok, a Busan prosecutor investigating the case.
"The engineers breached the regulation" about the emergency generator, Lee told reporters.
Prosecutors did not arrest the five engineers, who will be allowed to stand trial without being physically detained.
Last week, a report by the Korean Federation for Environmental Movement (KFEM) and the No Nukes Busan Citizen Countermeasure Commission showed that up to 900,000 people would perish and property damage would reach 628 trillion won ($532.7 billion) if an accident similar to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster occurs at the Gori-1 plant, which is running now beyond its technological life span.
The estimate was based on a simulated radioactive leak at the Gori-1 nuclear reactor near Busan, South Korea's second largest city.
The number of casualties was estimated at 47,580 immediate deaths and about 850,000 more eventual deaths caused by cancer from exposure to radiation, the report said.
Nuclear safety has become a growing public concern in South Korea following last year's nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan and revelations that Gori-1 officials tried to cover up the power outage at their plant in early February.
The 578-megawatt Gori-1 reactor was built with the U.S. in 1978. Its 30-year operational life span was extended 10 years in 2008 with some technological innovations.
Researchers said the report was made on the assumption that the amount of radiation that leaked at Gori-1 is as large as that reported at Chernobyl, with all nearby residents remaining in place prior to evacuation.
Chernobyl is recorded as the world's worst nuclear disaster. If a similar meltdown happens at Gori-1, it could wreak far greater havoc, researchers said, citing the plant's proximity to densely populated areas. Busan alone has 3.5 million residents. (Yonhap)