By Kim Tae-gyu
President Park Geun-hye vowed Monday to root out the chronic irregularities at the nation’s nuclear power plants, which critics claim went unchecked during the previous Lee Myung-bak administration.
“It is inexcusable when people’s lives and safety are sacrificed for private greed. I will sever the chain of corruption,” Park said in her weekly meeting with top secretaries.
“Use of substandard parts in nuclear power generation should not be allowed. I think the scandal is serious because it can affect lives of people not to mention the electricity supply.”
The President ordered her senior aides to get rid of the structural corruption and irregularities, which many believe started as far back as the early 1970s when the country started operating nuclear reactors.
Saenuri Party floor leader Choi Kyung-hwan, Park’s confidante, also said the National Assembly may launch an investigation into the case to prevent any recurrence.
Out of the country’s 23 nuclear reactors, 10 are currently not operational after the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission recently ordered two more to be taken offline, after suspending operations at two late last month due to substandard parts.
Fake quality warranties were found to be used during the construction of six reactors and this prompted the nuclear energy safety body to review all the test results for major components of the 23 reactors. Prosecutors have also vowed to get to the bottom of the scandal.
However, the painstaking and time-consuming reviews have another side to them — a nuclear reactor is composed of some 3 million components and those related to safety number 18,000.
Approximately, 2,000 makers supply the 18,000 safety-associated parts so the intensive investigations will take months and will not finish before summer finishes.
The sudden suspension of the 10 reactors, which account for about 10 percent of the country’s electricity demand, has raised fears of possible blackouts during peak summer demand.
The government is looking at measures to cut power consumption, but the current electricity reserve levels are already approaching very low levels.
As public outrage continues to mount over the allegations of corruption in the management of the country’s nuclear facilities, some are blaming the previous Lee administration for negligence, especially given that it was around the same time that it was aggressively exporting its nuclear technology.
Lee picked the nation’s $18.6-billion deal of building four nuclear reactors in the United Arab Emirates by 2020 as one of his most outstanding exploits and tried to replicate the success in other countries.
Their rationale is that the Lee government turned a blind eye to the irregularities so as not to undermine the credibility of made-in-Korea nuclear power plants. Officials of the former administration have strongly rejected the accusations.