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South Chungcheong Province on April 30. JS supplied faulty cables to nuclear power plants. (Yonhap News)

By Lee Seung-jun, staff reporter

Nuclear power policy and management in South Korea: a game where the players are their own referees?

Critics are saying the accidents and irregularities discovered over the past two years at nuclear plants are just the tip of the iceberg for a system that has gone on for more than 50 years, where a so-called “nuclear power mafia” holds public safety and power supply in its hands.

The biggest issue is a scandal that surfaced on May 28, in which plants were found to have been supplied with defective control cables after testing results were falsified, may not be the last. Even the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission (NSCC) acknowledged that similar scandals “could emerge” in the future. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) bidding information that was examined on June 2 showed that JS Cable, which supplied the faulty cables, also provided a number of Level Q “safe cables” to power plants such as Hanbit (in South Jeolla’s Yeonggwang) and Busan’s Kori between 2011 and 2013. Saehan TEP, the company implicated in the falsified documents, has routinely handled quality inspections, earning a 2012 award from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology for being an “outstanding business.” Data from a parliamentary audit last year showed that four businesses barred from bidding because of involvement in improprieties between 2008 and 2012 had earned presidential commendations or been selected as “outstanding nuclear power businesses for shared growth and cooperation.” KHNP has roughly one thousand companies making three million nuclear power plant parts, with seven testing institutes doing the safety inspections. But now it is uncertain just how safe they actually are.

According to critics, the root of the problem is a pervasive “back scratching” culture that has persisted for over half a century since an atomic energy division first appeared in 1956 in the technology education bureau of what was then the Ministry of Education.

“There has never been any accountability or punishment whenever a problem has occurred,” said Jang Jeong-wook, an economics professor at Japan’s Matsuyama University and frequent critic of the incestuous relationships among South Korean nuclear power businesses.

Up until the NSSC was launched in October 2011, national nuclear power safety and oversight was under the purview of agencies that also handled nuclear power promotion, such as the MEST. For around fifty years, laws on nuclear power operated through one system, the Atomic Energy Act. It took until July 2011 for them to be split into the Nuclear Power Promotion Act, Nuclear Safety Act, NSSC Act, and other legislation. The previous system had been pointed out as a problem by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The NSSC has been handling regulatory duties since 2011, but the players are still umpiring themselves. Current chairman Lee Eun-cheol and former chairman Kang Chang-soon were both members of the Korean Nuclear Society. The society also includes many executives with Doosan Heavy Industries and Samsung C & T, which were involved in power plant construction. Because of the expertise involved, shuffling between nuclear power promotion and regulatory organizations is something of an inevitability. The commission’s independence is also uncertain, with KHNP providing part of the nuclear energy R&D and safety monitoring budget.

“The logic that governs South Korean nuclear power plant safety is less about safety than economics,” said Jang Jeong-wook. “Stakeholders are employed in the government and regulatory organizations. We could be seeing a lot more layers to the nuclear power scandal onion going ahead.”

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