Barakah on EnergyNote

Barakah at five years: the UAE's Korean-built reactors, by the numbers

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 21:05:00 +0900

Drive 53 km west of Ruwais on the UAE’s Gulf coast and four reactor domes rise out of the desert together. All four have been generating power since September 2024. The first of them, Unit 1, passed its fifth anniversary of commercial operation in April 2026, which is the anchor date for this scorecard. What follows checks the plant’s own numbers, and its critics’ numbers, against primary sources.

What is the APR1400? Korea's export reactor explained — design, safety systems, track record and cost

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 15:18:00 +0900

Eight APR1400 reactors are selling electricity as of September 2026, four in South Korea and four at Barakah in the United Arab Emirates. A ninth, Saeul 3, is in commissioning, three more are under construction in Korea, and two units of its 1,000 MW-class derivative are under contract in Czechia. By our count it is the only large reactor since 2010 exported to a newcomer country and completed by a vendor outside China and Russia, and also a design whose first units took roughly twice as long to build as planned.

Korea's nuclear exports, project by project — Barakah, Dukovany and what comes next

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 23:56:00 +0900

Sixteen months. That is how long the European Commission spent reviewing the Dukovany contract before deciding, on June 5, 2026, not to open an in-depth investigation into Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) under the EU’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation. The decision left Korea’s second nuclear export where its first, Barakah, stood a decade and a half earlier: contracted, financed and waiting for concrete.