Korea on EnergyNote

Designing for 100,000 years: the world's deep repositories, from Onkalo to Korea's Gyeongju

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:30:00 +0900

The Great Pyramid of Giza has stood for about 4,600 years, which makes it one of the oldest large structures humans have built. A handful of countries are now building facilities that must stay safe for more than 100,000 years: deep geological repositories for high-level radioactive waste, mostly spent nuclear fuel. Engineering a guarantee longer than recorded history is hard enough.

Korea is asking whether to build more reactors — what the September 2026 public deliberation is really about

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:30:00 +0900

On August 20, 2026, in a National Assembly office building in Seoul, the committee drafting Korea’s next 15-year power plan put a new number on the table. Peak electricity demand in 2040 is now forecast at 158.4–165.0 GW, up from the 131.8–138.2 GW the same committee had forecast in April. The gap is about 27 GW, the output of nineteen large reactors of 1.4 GW each, and it appeared in four months.

Korea's SMR program in 2026: where i-SMR really stands, and what the new SMR Act changes

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:30:00 +0900

On September 1, 2026, Seoul National University’s Nuclear Policy Center and GS Energy, a private Korean power company, hosted a policy forum on building a “private-sector-led SMR business model.” SK Innovation presented a Korea–US cooperation model built around TerraPower. POSCO Holdings said it wants small modular reactors to supply the 1.7 GW of electricity its hydrogen-based steelmaking will need.