Put nuclear energy back on track

SOHN HAE-YONG
The author is the business news editor of the JoongAng Ilbo.

Dec. 27 marks the 13th Nuclear Safety and Promotion Day, or Nuclear Power Day. It is the biggest festivity in the nuclear industry and celebrates the first export of Korean nuclear reactors to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2009. A ministry official attended the ceremony and awarded presidential and prime ministerial honors for distinguished service to the nuclear industry.

But they were not celebrated in the last administration, which strongly pushed for a nuclear phaseout. The 2017 event — the first to be held under the Moon Jae-in government — did not have presidential and prime ministerial honors, lowering the status of government rewards. Ministers and vice ministers who were scheduled to attend the event only distributed congratulatory messages and did not show up.

The neglect continued until the end of the Moon administration. The 2021 event was held on December 23, four days earlier than usual. The government claimed it had rescheduled due to the Christmas holiday. I was covering the event at the time. But I still cannot forget one industry representative’s complain. He said that the day for the promotion of nuclear power had become a day to give up on nuclear energy.

We’ve seen a painful five years of nuclear phaseout trapped in dogmatic ideology. While Korea is slowing down despite its reputation as the world’s best in design, construction and operations, competitors like China and Russia are dominating the global reactor market.

In the meantime, the status of nuclear power plants in the global economy has changed. Major countries that previously saw nuclear power through rose-tinted glasses have since turned to “active acceptance.”

The European Union included nuclear energy in its environmentally friendly taxonomy, while France and Britain have declared that they will abandon their nuclear phaseouts. Sweden has resolved to build 10 nuclear plants by 2045. Japan has also removed restrictions on the lifespans of its nuclear plants, which will maximize their use for more than 60 years.

At the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) on Dec. 2, 22 countries declared that they would triple their nuclear power generation by 2050, compared to 2010, as carbon neutrality is an important task and the energy crisis is escalating. This is an opportunity for Korea to restore its ecosystem of nuclear power plants and increase their exports. Nevertheless, opposition parties continue holding the technology back.

Korea, a resource-poor country, has made the leap to become an economic powerhouse through industrialization thanks to its stable sources of nuclear power. No option other than nuclear energy can reduce Korea’s carbon emissions and meet its growing demand for electricity. But nuclear plants, following the Moon administration, became a sensitive political issue relying on factional logic.

Even Greta Thunberg, a world-renowned environmental activist, said that it would be a mistake to switch off active nuclear plants to focus on coal. If you rid yourself of the mindset that anti-nuclear groups are on our side and pro-nuclear groups are on the other, you will be able to find an answer as Thunberg’s.