The Feb. 9 blackout at the 35-year-old Gori-1 plant—the oldest nuclear facility in the country–in Busan lasted 12 minutes, during which an emergency back-up diesel generator also failed. The power failure was caused by an error by an engineer during a routine safety check.
Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, which oversees the operation of the country’s 21 nuclear power plants, didn’t comply with safety guidelines and failed to make an immediate report to Nuclear Safety and Security Commission. By law, nuclear accidents must be reported to the commission within 15 minutes.
The accident remained unknown for more than a month before a Busan City Council member overheard a conversation between plant engineers in a local restaurant and made a formal request to verify what had happened. On Tuesday, news of the power failure became public.
The incident shocked South Koreans, who are well aware that a power failure led to the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daichi power plant in Japan last year. Feeding into the fears are safety concerns about the aging Gori 1 plant, which was set to be decommissioned in 2007 but had its life span extended by another 10 years after a safety check-up.
Kim Jong-shin, chief executive of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, said on Wednesday that officials at the plant are worried that the accident might add to pressure to close the plant and, by extension, to cut back on Korea’s dependence on nuclear power. Currently, 31% of the country’s power supply comes from nuclear plants, the second largest power source after coal. The government plans to increase the dependency to 59% by 2030 by adding 19 additional plants.
Source of this excerpt: N FORMER
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