Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn presides over the Sixth Meeting of the Nuclear Power Promotion Committee on July 25, during which a master plan for managing HLW was established. (Photo: KORAD)

Some tension is expected as the nation sets out to find the site for a permanent facility to treat high-level radioactive waste (HLW). 

Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn presided over the Sixth Meeting of the Nuclear Power Promotion Committee on July 25, during which a master plan for managing HLW was established. 

The master plan calls for the designation of a site for a permanent facility to treat spent nuclear fuel through a 12-year investigation, public consultation and collection of public opinions. 

If a site is designated, an interim depository will be built by 2035, and a permanent depository for of spent nuclear fuel will be operational by 2053, according to the plan.

The daunting task that needs to be tackled, however, is persuading neighborhood residents of a finalized site. 

Director General for Nuclear Power Policy Chung Dong-hee of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said, “The existing storages of nuclear power complexes will be expanded for managing HLW temporarily before an interim depository is dedicated.”

The latest plan was established based on a framework worked out by the President Lee Myung-bak government in 2009 and a proposal of recommendations formed via a six-year public debate lasting until 2015. Taking those into consideration, it took one year for the current government to establish the master plan. Initially, the committee of public debate of HLW set a deadline for designating the site of a permanent depository for treating HLW by 2020, but the government delayed it to 2028. Concerning the reason for the delay, Deputy Minister Chae Hee-bong of the Office of Energy and Resources at the MOTIE said “Enough time has been spent on investigating for communications with residents and safety.”

Such a cautious approach of the government is due to the sensitivity of the issue of treating spent nuclear fuel. The government has learned a lesson of the past: seven attempts to build a low- and intermediate-level radwaste repository had ended up in a failure. In particular, the so-called Buan Incident that took place during the participatory government had caused a kind of trauma. But the government can no longer drag its feet since the in-house storage of the Wolsong Nuclear Power Complex will be filled to capacity by 2019, and that of the Y Hanbit Nuclear Power Complex is to be saturated by 2024. Finland, Sweden and Germany have designed a site or in a process of designation.

The government’s meticulous job has involved a process for designating a finalized site. A public consultation to select a site will be conducted after sorting out candidate sites unqualified for deep geological disposals. Candidate sites will be investigated on a preliminary basis. And next will come a procedure of gaining approval from relevant residents before an in-depth investigation into the final site is conducted. An interim repository will be built for seven years on the designated site to accommodate spent nuclear fuel at the saturated storages of the nuclear power unit prior to the constructing of a permanent repository. 

In the following 14-year-old process, an underground research lab will be built to verify the safe operation of the upcoming system. If confirmed to be safe, it will go into a 10-year process for building a permanent repository. It also contains suggestions on such diverse incentives being offered to the district of the finalized site as the relocating of related organizations, provision of support fees and urban development. 

Given many variables of the long-term project, alternatives will be also implemented. One of them is about keeping spent nuclear fuel in multinational permanent HLW repositories. Australia is now in a process of gaining approval from relevant residents for a multinational permanent HLW facility. A technology of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is under development. 

The technology is about “pyroprocessing,” an efficient method for recycling integral fast reactor (IFR fuel). Shin Jae-shik, director in charge of nuclear power promotion policy at the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) said, “Korea and the United States are conducting a feasibility study of the pyroprocessing technology since the nation is not allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel in accordance with the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The outcomes of the study will come up by 2020.” 

One of the biggest hurdles the government will have to overcome is about the parliamentary passage of the act on the procedures of managing HLW. Prof. Sung Pung-hyun of KAIST, currently chairman of Korea Nuclear Society, said it is essential to legislate the act for the road map to be implemented as planned, even in the case of a change in government.