Spent Fuel on EnergyNote

Kori-1: how South Korea's first commercial reactor decommissioning is actually going

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 13:00:00 +0900

On the coast of Gijang County, at the eastern edge of Busan, a 587 MW (gross) Westinghouse pressurized-water reactor that made electricity for 39 years is being taken apart. Kori-1 began commercial operation in April 1978 as South Korea’s first commercial nuclear power plant, was permanently shut down in June 2017, and in June 2025 became the first Korean reactor to receive a decommissioning approval. In November 2025 the first contractors moved in.

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.

Reprocess or bury? The world map of spent-fuel policy, and why Korea can't decide

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

Every fuel assembly that leaves a reactor core has to go somewhere, and for seventy years the nuclear world has argued over where.

There are only two real destinations. Reprocessing dissolves the fuel and pulls out the uranium and plutonium that can be used again. Direct disposal leaves the fuel as it is, seals it in a container and buries it in deep rock.