Yoon Suk-yeol, the newly elected South Korean President who will take office in May, campaigned on a full return to nuclear power development both domestically and overseas. The conservative former prosecutor won a slim victory in the March 9 election over the candidate from the liberal party of the current President Moon Jae-in.
After Moon’s anti-nuclear policy, which saw the shutting down of two older nuclear plants and suspension of construction on two 1400 MW plants in 2017, Yoon has pledged to re-launch the new plants, keep old plants on line as long as their safety is assured, and to seek contracts abroad for constructing ten new plants. Korea’s KEPCO has already built four APR-1400 plants in the U.A.E., two online and two nearing completion. “I will recover the ecosystem of nuclear power generation and advance safe nuclear technologies so that they can become a core engine to drive the country,” Yoon wrote on his Facebook page last month, as reported in the Korean Herald. There are now 24 nuclear power plants in the country.
