
Greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry - KabuseCha
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613325/how-greed-and-corruption-blew-up-south-koreas-nuclear-industry/
======
clarkmoody
Nuclear power presents the perfect storm for negative public image:

\- Environmental movement went anti-nuclear in the '70s for no particular
reason.

\- _Fear Sells_ in the media. Nothing strikes fear like the invisible killer
of radiation. Nuclear disasters get media attention like nothing else.

\- Nuclear weapons are scary, and rightfully so. And they share a word in
common with "nuclear power," so there you go.

Being tightly regulated and controlled by government makes an industry ripe
for "corruption and greed" since it takes political connection and maneuvering
to get things done.

It really is amazing, though, how much public image and politics can
completely stall forward progress on a power source with so much promise.

~~~
bilbo0s
In fairness, nuclear is also just incredibly expensive. Witness Vogtie. Take
away all taxes and regulations, then compare the price of, say, Iowa, building
a nuclear plant instead of just slapping up windmills wherever they want.
(Remember, we're assuming zero regulations. So while slapping up windmills
would normally be incredibly illegal, we're able to do that under the
conditions that our thought experiment postulates.) There's just no way to
make nuclear compete. Which is why when you drive through Iowa, all you see
are windmills everywhere. It's cheap. Much cheaper than nuclear.

If people want nuclear, the government has to provide the lion's share of the
assistance to make it happen. Even then, there are no guarantees you'll be in
love with what that looks like. At Vogtie for instance, the government has
taken the unprecedented step of prohibiting future users of Vogtie power from
ever switching to cheaper wind or coal alternatives. And that's on top of the
government agreeing to pay over half of the initial construction costs. So you
basically have government paying the lion's share of the tab, _and_ mandating
that everyone use it, and it's still over budget, late, and more expensive
than wind and coal alternatives.

Too many analyses of nuclear power ignore the financial realities. Iowans
choose wind, because it's cheaper than nuclear, solar, and coal. So they slap
up windmills, and they have the old coal plants to fill in the gaps. Now Iowa
was not _trying_ to put its nuclear plants out of business, but as a consumer
if you can choose an electricity bill at 2 cents per kWh, wouldn't you? Or
would you continue to pay the minimum 8x 2 cents per kWh for nuclear? That's
why nuclear is on the ropes in the US, if you give people a choice, they tend
to vote with their wallets.

~~~
rayiner
Your first paragraph misses the mark, because, unlike a nuclear plant, a
windmill or solar plant isn't a standalone power source. To have reliable
baseload power with renewables, you need massive battery storage. Right now,
you don't factor in the (very high) cost of building battery storage into the
cost of wind power because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear
plants providing baseload power. But the cost of all that baseload capacity
that's increasingly sitting around not being used (but has to be there to
ensure grid stability) can't be ignored.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _because you still have all those coal, gas, and nuclear plants providing
> baseload power..._

That's right. So why would you not decommission all of that incredibly
expensive nuclear, and draw down your use of the coal plants to fill in the
gaps? That's how most dispatch stacks work. It's just common sense. Consumers
want to save money. Utilities want to make enough money.

There's just no way you use nuclear in any scenario you can come up with,
_unless_ the government is paying for it. Then you don't care, because you're
not paying the costs.

~~~
rayiner
Coal can't dispatch fast enough, and most coal plants are at the end of their
lifecycle and need to be replaced. So you have to build new baseload capacity,
usually gas. (And really, you still need a bunch of batteries to handle short-
term fluctuations in renewables output.) The problem, then, is that you have
all new coal or gas plants, which are expensive capital assets, that you're
basically using for standby power. (And they incur operating and maintenance
costs even when not running.) You can't say that electricity from renewables
is cheap without accounting for the cost of that standby capacity renewables
require. A nuclear plant, by contrast, doesn't need a bunch of coal or gas
plants sitting around on standby. You can shut down that old coal plant, stop
paying the workers, reuse the land, etc.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _So you have to build new baseload capacity..._

No, you don't. The coal plant in another Alliant Energy area has been around
since roughly 1900? or so. It's been updated several times. Never was there a
need to rebuild from scratch any coal plant. (This is Madison Wi btw.) Now we
stopped using coal there in 2011, (all gas now). But the point is, all the
renovations are much cheaper than building a nuclear plant. Utilities around
here, (the midwest), are run by old, stodgy, conservative guys who are
generally not prone to rash action. There are very few executives around here
who are going to build entirely new plants because the machinery in the old
one has reached its end of service life. They are going to replace the
machinery, at a fraction of the cost. I don't think executives in other parts
of the nation are all that different in this regard. Now all that said, even
if they did completely tear down and rebuild their plants, which they
wouldn't, but even if they did, it would still be cheaper than building a
nuclear plant.

So the coal plants are fine. And as I mentioned elsewhere, whatever you use to
fill gaps will be a transitional technology. Wind turbines will become more
efficient. (Work at lower windspeeds.) Pumped hydro storage will be built in
new and innovative ways. What will fill the gaps in 2069 will bear little
resemblance to what is filling the gaps in 2019. Because the new methods will
likely be not only more clean, but much cheaper to boot.

And incidentally,

> _You can 't say that electricity from renewables is cheap without accounting
> for the cost of that standby capacity renewables require..._

the 2 cents per kWh people see on their bill does factor in every source in
the dispatch stack.

~~~
torpfactory
Just to back up your point a bit:

[https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
energy-...](https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-
levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/)

Running existing coal and nuclear generation appears to be cheap (2nd chart),
but new generation appears to be much more expensive (1st chart). The cost of
Solar + Storage is low and dropping, and already beats the cost of new nuclear
plants (4th chart).

BTW, I grew up on the east side of Madison, Cheers.

------
pcr910303
Okay, I’m a South Korean citizen. That, is one aspect. Consider another
aspect. Nuclear reactors are dangerous. That doesn’t change. We get the
Fukushima accident much more prominently because Japan is so close th Korea
and everyone (literally everyone) had to worry about eating Fukushima fish.
Nuclear reactors are dangerously close to so many cities, and that can’t
change, because our country is too small, and there are so many mountains
(which take up space). It’s different from saying ‘Hey, it’s failure rate is
super small, it’s gonna be safe.’ and living close to the reactors and
worrying about the tiny failure rate. And, I was Science High School student
which studied nuclear reactors in detail. What would usual people feel?

~~~
joecool1029
> Nuclear reactors are dangerous.

Doesn't Korea have coal? Shows up as over a quarter of your generation. Have
you been to a region that uses coal for energy generation and seen what it
does to the land? Mining it causes heavy metal pollution of water that kills
people, the fish pick up mercury and lead, and people consume the fish.
Shouldn't you be more concerned about coal plants in China contaminating your
waters?

EDIT: Korea study on mercury sources:
[https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1309104215302713](https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S1309104215302713)

~~~
pcr910303
> Shouldn’t you be more concerned about coal plants in China contaminating
> your waters? Oh course we are concerned, and for what I know our government
> is keep contacting the Chinese government; however it is hard for Korea to
> make changes in China’s energy plans. Korea is both migrating from neuclear
> reactors, coal plants, etc... to LNG plants (which are much more clean and
> do not produce much dust) and renewable energy.

------
mrpopo
Another reason for the "country’s shrinking appetite for nuclear" that I can
cite is the North Korean terrorist threat.

Rationally, there is little reason for the North Korean state to cause long
term damage to a soil that they claim belongs to them, and also the number of
such attacks is now close to zero, but as we all know this kind of fear will
not go away.

Renewables could work as a replacement, but this may only further weaken South
Korea's position in the energy sector in the 21st century. They have a large
petroleum and natural gas refining sector, which as we know needs to be phased
out. What will be their trajectory in this context?

~~~
bboygravity
"Renewables could work as a replacement"

No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist.
Case in point: closing nuclear plants and replacing them with renewables is
what Germany has been trying to do and has failed to do so far. They
essentially replaced (and will continue to replace) nuclear by renewables
paired with coal and gas plants running on standby. They can't cold start
these plants fast enough to catch dips in energy production from renewables.

You simply can't replace a constant energy source (nuclear) by an intermittent
one (most renewables).

I'm guessing South Korea will go the same route as "good example" Germany.
Push renewables. Which translates to; close nuclear plants, invest heavily in
solar and wind paired with gas and coal. End result: more CO2 emissions,
higher consumer energy prices, but most importantly: a clean reputation
through good intentions.

Renewables at this stage are more about politically correct marketing than
about clean and safe energy.

~~~
mschuster91
> No. They can't as long as cheap energy storage on mass scales doesn't exist.

It does, Tesla's grid-scale Powerwall made 25% of its cost in profits in 6
months (per [https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in-
austral...](https://insideevs.com/news/340702/tesla-powerpack-in-australia-
generated-17-million-in-revenue-in-6-months/)).

Aside from using Powerwalls, us Europeans have extensive experience with using
hydro pump storage.

~~~
jjoonathan
So why did Germany go with gas and coal?

~~~
mschuster91
Our coal infrastructure is on the way to be phased out, it won't be around for
long-term any more - the Kohlekommission proposed 2035-2038 for the final
shutdown, with 12.5 GW of 42.6 GW capacity going offline until 2022 (per
[https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-01/kohlekommission-
kohle...](https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-01/kohlekommission-
kohleausstieg-bundesregierung-plan-kraftwerke-braunkohle)).

What's left will be gas and renewables.

~~~
bboygravity
It is planned to be phased out. Just like nuclear. That means that within 15
years Germany will have to replace roughly 70 % of its constant energy sources
(nuclear and coals) by the only scalable constant energy source left: gas.
Thereby becoming completely reliant on gas from Russia. Creating a massive
geopolicital risk that didn't exist previously.

[http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/201...](http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/04/Germany-Electricity-Generation.png)

I'll believe it when I see it. Also. What problem exactly is that supposed to
solve?

I thought the whole energiewende stunt was about decreasing CO2 emissions. I'm
not seeing this.

~~~
imtringued
>by the only scalable constant energy source left: gas.

What makes you think coal and nuclear are scalable? Gas has been the only
option from the start and simply switching from coal to gas already results in
a 50-60% CO2 reduction.

------
tim333
Yeah there was greed and corruption but as the article says other countries
have stopped too:

>A similar reversal is beginning in China, until recently seen as nuclear
energy’s biggest champion. There, as in South Korea, Fukushima awakened public
fears and forced the government to adopt tougher safety standards, which now
threaten to push the cost of nuclear power out of reach. Of the world’s other
major producers of nuclear power, only Russia is still aggressively building
more reactors...

I hope renewables and batteries play out.

~~~
bboygravity
I call BS on "a similar reversal is beginning in China" :

"China is no stranger to nuclear power. The stated PRC goal is to raise
domestic nuclear energy output from 43 gigawatts (GW) to 300 GW by 2030."
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/04/25/china-
ent...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2019/04/25/china-enters-
global-tech-race-for-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-
its-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612564/chinas-losing-its-taste-
for-nuclear-power-thats-bad-news/) (China’s losing its taste for nuclear
power. That’s bad news.)

> Officially China still sees nuclear power as a must-have. But unofficially,
> the technology is on a death watch. Experts, including some with links to
> the government, see China’s nuclear sector succumbing to the same problems
> affecting the West: the technology is too expensive, and the public doesn’t
> want it.

> The 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant shocked Chinese
> officials and made a strong impression on many Chinese citizens. A
> government survey in August 2017 found that only 40% of the public supported
> nuclear power development.

> The bigger problem is financial. Reactors built with extra safety features
> and more robust cooling systems to avoid a Fukushima-like disaster are
> expensive, while the costs of wind and solar power continue to plummet: they
> are now 20% cheaper than electricity from new nuclear plants in China,
> according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Moreover, high construction costs
> make nuclear a risky investment.

China's electricity consumption growth is also rapidly slowing due to
faltering economic growth.

------
oppressedgf
Of all the words you could use to describe the nuclear industry, blew up
should not be in the list

------
AnimalMuppet
"Blew up" in the context of the nuclear industry could be not the best choice
of words...

------
rurban
What they didn't explain was that this crazy APR1400 is the same design is the
one of most dangerous and experimental US reactors, South Texas and Palo
Verde, with vessels of double size and half the security measures. The only
ones matching them in size and dangerousness were the experimental Korean 1400
ones.

~~~
cladari
South Texas is a 4 loop Westinghouse design and Palo Verde is a 2 loop System
80 Combustion Engineering design. Neither is experimental or unusually
dangerous.

~~~
rurban
South Texas is a French P4 Framatime design with 1400 MW vessels, not used
anywhere else in the US (rated experimental) just Korea, with the highest
incident rate in the US and the biggest vessels.

Palo Verde is also overlarge and so dangerous with any external cooling
possibilities (it's in the dessert), that US fighters regularly have to
protect it from unknown planes flying nearby. Anti-Terror measures.

Both were labeled experimental and are extremely dangerous. South Texas just
recently was very close to a meltdown during the Houston hurricane. The river
nearby rose to the levels almost spilling over into their huge coolant pools.
It was something like 40cm. They didn't utter a single word.

------
vbuwivbiu
it's one industry where you must assume the worst of the companies that run it
because the consequences of mistakes are so terrible

------
kpmcc
I thought greed and corruption were good for industry...

------
sunkenvicar
Scott Adams just interviewed Michael Shellenberger on his podcast. Michael
explains nuclear power and how it compares to the competition.

[https://blog.dilbert.com/2019/04/30/episode-512-scott-
adams-...](https://blog.dilbert.com/2019/04/30/episode-512-scott-adams-
part-1-pro-nuclear-environmentalist-and-expert-michael-shellenberger/)

