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🇰🇷 South Korea /Energy & Infrastructure

South Korean civic groups oppose Hanbit nuclear storage facility and demand referendum first

From Hankyoreh · () Korean

Translated from Korean and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • Civic groups in Gochang called for work on an interim high-level radioactive waste storage facility at Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant to stop.
  • They said authorities should hold a resident referendum and broader regional public deliberation before proceeding.
  • The groups warned that a facility designed to operate for at least 50 years could become a de facto permanent nuclear waste site.

Civic groups in southwestern South Korea are opposing plans to build a spent-fuel storage facility at Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant, saying resident consent must come before construction.

The Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant Response Joint Action and a Won-Buddhist committee seeking the plant’s permanent closure held a news conference in Gochang, North Jeolla Province, on Sept. 4. They called for an immediate halt to procedures for building an interim storage facility without local agreement.

Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power is pursuing dry-storage capacity at the plant site ahead of an expected saturation of Hanbit’s spent-fuel pools in 2030. Information sessions and public hearings on a draft facility plan are taking place in Yeonggwang and Gochang. The groups said those meetings amounted only to explanations and discussions, not meaningful consent.

Immediately stop the construction process for an interim storage facility on the site without residents’ consent.

· Hanbit Nuclear Power Plant Response Joint Action and allied groupsThe groups made the demand at a news conference in Gochang.

They also objected to limiting the affected local governments to areas within a 5-kilometer radius of a high-level radioactive waste facility. They said residents and local governments within the 30-kilometer radiation emergency planning zone were being excluded from decisions, as well as from possible support and compensation.

The groups warned that the proposed interim facility could operate for at least 50 years under its design life, or more than 60 years if extended. They said plans to secure interim and final disposal facilities remain only goals, creating a risk that on-site storage could become a permanent repository. They also criticized calculations based on unapproved lifetime extensions for Hanbit reactors 1 to 4 by 20 years and reactors 5 and 6 by 10 years. The groups demanded that construction plans be scrapped and that a fundamental solution for high-level radioactive waste be developed.

If a final disposal facility cannot be secured, the on-site storage facility called interim could effectively become a permanent disposal site.

· Civic groupsThe groups warned that long-term interim storage could shift the nuclear waste burden to future generations.
About this summary

Originally published by Hankyoreh in Korean. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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