South Korea will check all nuclear reactors

The Korean Nuclear Regulatory Agency said on the 7th that it will conduct strict inspections on all 23 nuclear reactors in the country to ensure the safety of these units.

The South Korean government announced on the 5th that due to a batch of spare parts with forged safety and quality certificates, mixed with 5 sets of nuclear power generating units, they had to stop shutting down two of them. This incident triggered public concerns about the safety of nuclear energy.

A spokesman for the Korea Nuclear Safety Commission said that it will conduct safety inspections on 23 completed reactors and five reactors under construction. For this purpose, the committee has established an investigation team consisting of 60 experts. In addition, the prosecution department will investigate whether there is an accomplice within the counterfeit supplier and the state-owned Korea Hydro-Atomic Energy Corporation.

It is reported that South Korea's Hydro Atomic Energy Corporation operates all 23 reactors in Korea and supplies 35% of the country's electricity. The two affected units will be shut down until January next year, which may cause South Koreans to feel "unprecedented" winter electricity consumption.

In 1978, South Korea started to use nuclear power to generate electricity. It has taken 573 outages in the past 10 years and has lost about 400 million U.S. dollars in economic losses. South Koreans are concerned that frequent breakdowns and accidents pose a security risk. However, the South Korean government has not wavered in its ambition to develop nuclear power and export nuclear power technology. It intends to build 16 nuclear power plants by 2030.