Korea shows nuclear's friendly face

SEOUL // Between the shops selling bamboo-handled paintbrushes and sweet rice cakes, a young man smothered in an oversized yellow jacket struggled to get his arms around a sign bearing the cartoon face of a politician.

Jong-min Hong, a third-year history student at a university here in Seoul, doesn't have much to say about the candidate.

His support for the Democratic United Party goes only as far as the 70,000 South Korean won (Dh227) he is being paid to wear a bright yellow jacket with the opposition party's name.

But the 20-year-old's mercenary political attitude disappears when he gets on to the topic of nuclear energy.

"Nuclear is harmful to my DNA, you understand?" he says, struggling to find words strong enough for his convictions. "Nuclear is out."

His bare fingers fumbled in the icy morning air for his iPhone so he could look up the English words for the alternatives he favoured. Wind energy. Tidal power.

A generation of Koreans such as Mr Hong has grown up versed in the health risks of radiation and imbued with the belief that renewable energy is more reality than dream. Governance that has inched from military-style rule to today's fractious democracy has opened up more possibilities for public debate in the past half century.

And accidents such as Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi triple meltdown and a cooling failure at a plant here in South Korea have dampened public support for nuclear energy in the past year.

Now South Korea is increasing its effort to convince people such as Mr Hong that atomic power is good here and abroad in nations such as Vietnam and Turkey, where South Korea is looking to sell its nuclear technology.

Representatives of the Korea Nuclear Energy Promotion Agency (Konepa), the government body tasked with raising public acceptance levels, have travelled to South East Asia to share techniques. In South Korea they are distributing to children as early as kindergarten comic books starring a popular cartoon baby dinosaur named Dooly.

This year, Konepa's budget rose by 30 per cent, passing the US$10 million (Dh36.7m) mark for the first time to pay for a reform in outreach strategy and risk management in the aftermath of Fukushima, according to officials.

Fostering public acceptance is vital for South Korea, which plans to build seven more nuclear power plants to add to its fleet of 23. Atomic power, which accounts for about a third of the country's electricity generation, has helped to meet demand that has grown tenfold from 5.46 million kilowatts in 1989 to 58.99 kilowatts in 2006 thanks to South Korea's economic and industrial transformation from a developing nation to a donor country.

On the south-east coast, Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) is building its latest form of reactor technology, the same APR1400 model that has been selected for Abu Dhabi.

"For a nuclear power project to begin, public acceptance is very, very important," said Jun-yeon Byun, Kepco's chief nuclear officer, in an interview at the company's headquarters in Seoul. "In other words, safety is top priority. And so without the support from the public, no government can begin the nuclear project."

Public acceptance efforts are common across nuclear nations. In Russia, Rosatom helped to fund a film starring a youthful nuclear scientist called Atomic Ivan. Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Abu Dhabi's nuclear company, holds town hall meetings throughout the emirate and has worked with the education authority to bring a nuclear-related curriculum to schools.

In South Korea, regulators, nuclear-plant operators and the promotional agency stressed the need to regain public trust after an incident at Kori 1, the country's oldest plant.

The plant was undergoing a routine shutdown when its regular and backup power systems failed, stopping the cooling systems for the high-temperature core and spent-fuel ponds. The temperature of the core coolant rose from 36.9°C to 58.3°C and in the used-fuel pond from 0.5°C to 21.5°C in the 12 minutes before workers managed to restore power.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the reactor operator and the contractor and co-operator in the UAE's planned nuclear plant, did not immediately report the incident, and a report by the regulator released last month said staff had deleted records of the event.

"The major problem of Kori unit 1 is the forgery - forgery, concealment and cover-up - of the incident that actually took place one month ago," said Youn Won Park, the president of the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, the government's technical agency. "Fukushima impacted quite a lot the public acceptance, so after the Fukushima accident the public acceptance slowed down.

"And now Kori unit 1 gives another impact on the public acceptance - not just for the safety matter … but the concealment or cover-up. That really damaged quite seriously the public confidence."

Until the early 1980s, South Korea enjoyed extensive public support for its nuclear-energy programme. Its smartest scientists joined the cause, western-educated Koreans working abroad moved back to help the programme, and in 1978 Kori 1 went live.

"It was a time when people were very submissive towards government policy," recalled Kim Dong-won, the nuclear energy promotion division director at Konepa. "Now we're living in a very transformed democracy period where the individual voices are highly regarded."

Konepa came into being in 1992, after the government encountered resistance against a low to mid-level radioactive waste storage site proposed for an island. The storage site never came into being, and to this day all of Korea's highly radioactive spent fuel waits out an uncertain fate in cooling ponds that are expected to start filling up within a decade.

South Korea has also developed a strategy for the operators: pay off the people.

In a public-assistance programme that launched in 1989, the operator or local government provides funding to people in neighbouring areas of 0.25 won for every kilowatt hour produced at the plant.

The money covers income increases, education, welfare and investment in local businesses throughout construction and operation. In contrast, operators of renewable-energy facilities pay 0.1 won per kilowatt-hour and coal-fired plants 0.15 won, according to Konepa.

Six years later, the government introduced a programme in which the operator provides assistance equal to 1.5 per cent of the plants's total cost for every year of its construction. An extra 0.5 per cent is tacked on if the neighbourhood voluntarily welcomes the plant.

That has not held the public back from voicing concerns about safety and transparency after Fukushima and the incident at Kori 1. Last month, protesters steered a lifeboat to the waters just outside Kori 1 and unfurled a yellow banner emblazoned with a radioactive hazard symbol and the words "KORI No. 1 OUT!"

"As within any country, interest in safety has greatly increased after the Fukushima accident," said Mr Byun of Kepco.

"But in Korea, I think that maybe the safety issue has been a little bit exaggerated, because in Korea this year we have several political events. And so the opposition party is emphasising and sort of exaggerating the issue at hand."

Since Fukushima, Konepa has published a hardcover guidebook on promoting public acceptance of nuclear, covering a range of topics including handling interviews with the media and hosting community events.

The first image is a double-page photo of children frolicking with inner tubes and swimming goggles at the beach in front of a nuclear plant.

"We were not established to resolve the issues," said Yang Young Jin, Konepa's planning and administration director. "Our job is to make the best effort to minimise the public distrust between the public and the operator and the government."

He paused, picking his words carefully.

"It's not even our job to get rid of public distrust. It's always going to be there as long as the democratic government exists."

ayee@thenational.ae