[Worse yet,
investigators discovered that the questionable components are installed in 14
of South Korea’s 23 nuclear power plants. The country has already shuttered
three of those reactors temporarily because the questionable parts used there
were important, and more closings could follow as investigators wade through
more than 120,000 test certificates filed over the past decade to see if more
may have been falsified.]
 |
Jeon Heon-Kyun/European Pressphoto Agency
A nuclear plant being constructed in Ulsan, South Korea. Questionable components are installed in 14 of
its 23 nuclear plants.
|
SEOUL, South Korea — Like Japan, resource-poor South Korea has long relied on nuclear
power to provide the cheap electricity that helped build its miracle economy.
For years, it met one-third of its electricity needs with nuclear power,
similar to Japan’s level of dependence before the 2011 disaster at its Fukushima plant.
Now, a snowballing
scandal in South Korea about bribery and faked safety tests for critical plant
equipment has highlighted yet another similarity: experts say both countries’
nuclear programs suffer from a culture of collusion that has undermined their
safety. Weeks of revelations about the close ties between South Korea’s nuclear
power companies, their suppliers and testing companies have led the prime
minister to liken the industry to a mafia.
The scandal started
after an anonymous tip in April prompted an official investigation. Prosecutors
have indicted some officials at a testing company on charges of faking safety
tests on parts for the plants. Some officials at the state-financed company
that designs nuclear power plants were also indicted on charges of taking
bribes from testing company officials in return for accepting those substandard
parts.
Worse yet, investigators
discovered that the questionable components are installed in 14 of South
Korea’s 23 nuclear power plants. The country has already shuttered three of
those reactors temporarily because the questionable parts used there were important,
and more closings could follow as investigators wade through more than 120,000
test certificates filed over the past decade to see if more may have been
falsified.
In a further indication
of the possible breadth of the problems, prosecutors recently raided the
offices of 30 more suppliers suspected of also providing parts with faked
quality certificates and said they would investigate other testing companies.
“What has been revealed
so far may be the tip of an iceberg,” said Kune Y. Suh, a professor of nuclear
engineering at Seoul National University.
With each new
revelation, South Koreans — who, like the Japanese, had grown to believe their
leaders’ soothing claims about nuclear safety — have become more jittery.
Safety is the biggest concern, but the scandals have also caused economic
worries. At a time of slowing growth, the government had loudly promoted its
plans to become a major builder of nuclear power plants abroad.
The scandal, Professor
Suh said, “makes it difficult to continue claiming to build reliable nuclear
power plants cheaply.”
South Koreans say they
are already suffering for the industry’s sins. The closing of the three
reactors, in addition to another three offline for scheduled maintenance, has
led the country’s leaders to order a nationwide energy-saving campaign in the
middle of a particularly muggy summer. At university campuses, students have
deserted the libraries for cooler Internet cafes, and major corporations have
turned down air-conditioning.
President Park Geun-hye
has kept off her own air-conditioning even when she hosted foreign guests,
including Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook. And some
entrepreneurs have capitalized on the troubles, selling “cool scarves” made of
a special fabric that, after being dipped in water, keeps wearers cool for
hours. But the modeling and creativity have not stopped the grousing, or
alleviated anger at the industry.
Critics of South Korea’s
nuclear industry say there were plenty of warning signs.
Last year, the
government was forced to shut down two reactors temporarily after it learned
that parts suppliers — some of whom were later convicted — had fabricated the
safety-test certificates for more than 10,000 components over 10 years. But the
government emphasized at the time that those parts were “nonessential” items
and that the industry was otherwise sound.
As it turned out, the
problems went much deeper.
The investigation that
began this spring suggested that the oversight within the supply chain may also
be more deeply compromised. A company that was supposed to test reactor parts
skipped portions of the exams, doctored test data or even issued safety
certificates for parts that failed its tests, according to government
investigators. And this time the parts involved included more important items.
Among the parts that failed the tests were cables used to send signals to
activate emergency measures in an accident.
“This is not a simple
negligence or mistake; this is a deliberate fabrication by those who were
supposed to safeguard the reliability of parts,” said Kim Yong-soo, a professor
of nuclear engineering at Hanyang University in Seoul. “It raises serious
questions about the immune system of our nuclear power industry.”
Although much remains
unclear with the investigations under way, experts say they know enough to
pinpoint the underlying cause of the scandal: an industry that is even more
highly centralized than Japan’s, with poor oversight on the relations among the
major players.
While Japan has a small
number of utilities that provide nuclear power, South Korea has just one: the
state-run Korea Electric Power Corporation, or Kepco. One of its subsidiaries,
Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, runs all the plants. Another, Kepco
Engineering & Construction, designs them and is tasked with inspecting
parts from suppliers and vetting the safety certificates they include from
testing companies.
Over the years, senior
retirees from the two subsidiaries have found jobs with parts suppliers and
testing companies or invested in them, according to industry data submitted to
the National Assembly.
In a culture where
honoring personal ties is often considered more important than following
regulations, the porous borders among the members of the supply chain resulted
in what government officials and industry experts call an “entrenched chain of
corruption.” Important school and hometown connections among the groups further
cemented the collusive links, they said. And then there is the lure of bribery,
which has often lubricated relationships between South Korean parts suppliers
and their buyers in various industries.
“In the past 30 years,
our nuclear energy industry has become an increasingly closed community that
emphasized its specialty in dealing with nuclear materials and yet allowed
little oversight and intervention,” the government’s Ministry of Trade,
Industry and Energy said in a recent report to lawmakers. “It spawned a litany
of corruption, an opaque system and a business practice replete with
complacency.”
In the current scandal,
Korea Hydro officials are accused of ordering Kepco E & C to ignore faked
certificates from the testing firm Saehan Total Engineering Provider Company.
The testing company’s top officials and investors included current and former
employees from Kepco E & C or their family members. (Although the company
was called for comment several times in recent days, no one picked up the main
line.)
But the problems appear
to go beyond testing. At the home of one of the Korea Hydro officials,
investigators found boxes of cash amounting to several hundred thousand
dollars. Investigators tracing the origin of the money recently arrested
officials of Hyundai Heavy Industries, a major parts supplier, on bribery
charges. Prosecutors said the money was meant to ensure contracts for Hyundai
Heavy and appeared not to be part of the scandal over testing certificates.
In a statement jointly
issued in June, Korea Hydro, Kepco E & C and two other state-financed
nuclear industry companies promised “self-purification measures.” To “root out
corruption arising from collusive ties,” they said they would make it mandatory
for senior officials to make public their personal assets, ban all employees
from buying stocks in suppliers or getting jobs there after retirement, and
reduce the retirement package benefits for those fired for corruption.
Amid a public uproar,
the government fired the heads of both the Kepco subsidiaries. It also promised
to enact new laws and tighten regulations to ban retirees from the two
subsidiaries from getting jobs at suppliers and test agencies.
Political opposition
parties, which control some seats on the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission
— the top nuclear watchdog, which has long been criticized as being too cozy
with the industry — recently added two critics of nuclear power to the regulatory
group. But many worry the changes, and promised changes, will not be enough.
After last year’s
scandal, the government had vowed to keep parts suppliers found to have
falsified documents from bidding again for 10 years. But in February, Korea
Hydro imposed only a six-month penalty for such suppliers. And nuclear
opponents say that more fundamental changes are needed in the regulatory
system, pointing out that one of the government’s main regulating arms, the
Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety, gets 60 percent of its annual budget from
Korea Hydro.
Some go further, saying
ordinary South Koreans will have to change their own expectations before real
change can occur.
The nuclear industry,
they say, was built around the notion that South Korea’s industries needed
inexpensive power, leading Kepco to build plants quickly and operate them
cheaply.
“South Koreans have
guzzled cheap electricity while turning a blind eye to the safety concerns of
their nuclear power plants,” said Yang Lee Won-young, a leader at the Korean
Federation for Environmental Movement. “They may end up paying dearly.”
