What if the nuclear phase-out stays put?

AN HYO-SEONG
The author is a stock market news reporter of the JoongAng Ilbo.

According to the stock market, we are in the heyday of electricity. Shares of power infrastructure companies — such as transformer producers — have surged sharply in Korea this year as investors anticipate an increase in demand for power amid the fast spread of artificial intelligence. The United States is no different. Energy companies such as Constellation are benefitting from the relentless AI boom.

Interest in nuclear power is also growing again. Data centers require a stable electricity supply 24 hours a day. Nuclear power plants can produce energy year-round and generate low carbon emissions. This is why Open AI CEO Sam Altman and other leaders are obsessed with nuclear power.

News reports of the United States welcoming a “nuclear renaissance” have proliferated since last year. The U.S. government is pouring out support for nuclear power companies, including small modular reactor (SMR) developers. The decision reflects the reality that it will be hard to achieve decarbonization by 2050 with renewable energy alone — and the political aim of bringing the nuclear ecosystem back to the United States from Russia and China.

However, expectations of a revival in nuclear power seem to be fading in Korea after being rekindled by the Yoon Suk Yeol administration. The majority Democratic Party (DP) has clearly expressed its opposition to the conservative government’s plan to scrap the past administration’s nuclear phase-out and strengthen the ecosystem of nuclear power instead. The DP promised to increase the share of renewable energy to 40 percent by 2035. That’s why many nuclear power-related stocks fell as much as 10 percent on April 11, a day after the DP won a landslide victory over the governing People Power Party in the April 10 parliamentary election.

On Feb. 28, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Atomic Energy Advancement Act, which takes various supportive actions, including simplifying the approval process for the design of next-generation reactors such as SMRs. A total of 365 lawmakers supported the bill while only 36 opposed. The New York Times quoted an energy expert from Third Way, a center-left think tank, as saying, “This is not an issue where there’s some big partisan or ideological divide.”

What would have happened if the same bill were presented in our National Assembly? Chances are high that it would fail to pass due to ideological battles. I cannot imagine a Korean opposition lawmaker saying what Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat from Colorado, stated in Congress. “Nuclear energy is not a silver bullet, but if we’re going to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, it must be part of the mix,” she said.