Kim Sungwhan: "Additional Nuclear Power Plant Construction Should Be Determined by Public Opinion"

Appeared on JTBC's "Genre Only Yeouido" on August 10
"15 Nuclear Power Plants Worth of Electricity Needed for Yongin and Gwangju Semiconductor Clusters"
12th Basic Electricity Plan to Include Issue of Additional Nuclear Power in October

Kim Sungwhan, Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment, stated on August 10, "If simply expanding renewable energy is not sufficient, experts will need to ask the public whether to additionally increase nuclear power, and a decision must be made as part of the 12th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand." In doing so, the minister left open the possibility of building additional nuclear power plants.

Appearing on JTBC's "Genre Only Yeouido" that day, Minister Kim said, "Public opinion on nuclear power is evenly divided, so we should listen carefully to these views and make a decision accordingly."

Seonghwan Kim, Minister of Climate and Environment. The Asia Business Daily DB

The minister emphasized that advance preparations for electricity are necessary to run semiconductor factories and artificial intelligence (AI) data centers. He explained, "Now, semiconductors alone will require 15 gigawatts (GW) in Yongin and 6GW in Gwangju, totaling 21GW. Although some of this was included in previous plans, most of the power will be newly required." He added that just the semiconductor clusters in Yongin and Gwangju will require the equivalent of 15 nuclear power plants, each at a capacity of 1.4GW.

Minister Kim stated, "Even in the past, we made rough projections like, 'If gross domestic product (GDP) increases, electricity demand will roughly increase by this much,' and to an extent, semiconductor and data center demand was incorporated into that. Nonetheless, it is a fact that electricity demand is surging far beyond previous levels. Even though the Lee Jae-myung administration set a target to expand renewable energy to 100GW by 2030, there are concerns that this alone will not be sufficient."

The government plans to finalize the 12th Basic Electricity Plan by October. Minister Kim commented, "We need to prepare for the era of the AI revolution and the climate crisis, so the approach should be to significantly increase renewables, make up any shortfall partly with nuclear power, and rapidly reduce coal as well as gas. We are, in effect, facing a highly complex equation, where we must meet both the national goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and the rapidly growing electricity demand associated with the era of the artificial intelligence revolution."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.