With as many as 10 localities submitting citizen petitions to host a nuclear waste dump, the government’s long-cherished wish to select a site for the facility is gaining momentum. Compared to its experience in the past, when it received 11 applications – including that of Buan – only to run into severe opposition from locals after it had selected one, this time around seems quite different.

This is not, however, a situation in which the government can rest easy by simply choosing one of the competing sites. Firstly, just because you’ve received petitions from citizens doesn’t mean those petitions reflect the entire opinion of the locals. In the case of Uljin County, in which Sampo-ri, Samsan-ni and Gomong-ni issued citizen petitions for the dump, there was much opposition within the country as a whole, as was the case in Buan, in which locals on Wido Island welcomed construction, but people in the rest of Buan opposed it. Secondly, for most of the people who led the petitions, their primary motivation was not so much an understanding of the nuclear waste dump facilities but the expectation of W3 billion in support funds. That people competed over securing aid money in a project in which safety should have been foremost considered is quite worrisome. Thirdly, one cannot simply look away from the fact that environmental groups, the Democratic Labor Party and others are demanding that our nuclear power-centered energy policy be fundamentally reconsidered.

While nuclear plants are operating, processing nuclear waste is something we cannot avoid. We have some serious issues ahead of us, like not just what to do with relatively harmless waste, but also used fuel rods and discarding old reactors. Our long-term energy policies are connected to this. This is something our government cannot solve unless it opens its mind and builds a wide consensus. Rather than having our government solve this problem hastily, we hope to make this opportunity a start to that kind of wide discussion. This is the path to truly solving tensions.

The Hankyoreh, 1 June 2004.

[Translations by Seoul Selection. (MK)]