Kori Nuclear Power Plant

The Kori Nuclear Power Plant (Korean: 고리원자력발전소, Hanja: 古里原子力發電所) is a South Korean nuclear power plant located in Kori, a suburban village in Busan. It is owned and operated by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, a subsidiary of KEPCO. The first reactor began commercial operation in 1978 and operated until 2017 when it was decommissioned. Units 2, 3, and 4 started commercial operations in the 1980s, and are all slated to be decommissioned in the mid-2020s. All reactors on site are pressurized water reactors.

Kori Nuclear Power Plant
Kori Nuclear Power Plant, Reactors Kori 1, Kori 2, Kori 3, Kori 4 from right to left.
Official name	고리원자력발전소
Country	South Korea
Location	Gori, Busan
Coordinates	35.319904°N 129.290053°E
Status	Operational
Construction began	Unit 1: August 1, 1972 Unit 2: December 23, 1977 Unit 3: October 1, 1979 Unit 4: April 1, 1980 Unit 5: June 16, 2006 Unit 6: June 5, 2007 Unit 7: October 16, 2008 Unit 8: August 19, 2009
Commission date	Unit 1: April 29, 1978 Unit 2: July 25, 1983 Unit 3: September 30, 1985 Unit 4: April 29, 1986 Unit 5: February 28, 2011 Unit 6: July 20, 2012 Unit 7: December 20, 2016 Unit 8: August 29, 2019
Decommission date	Unit 1: June 18, 2017
Owner(s)	Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power
Operator(s)	Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power
Nuclear power station
Reactor type	PWR
Reactor supplier	Westinghouse KEPCO E&C
Cooling source	Sea of Japan (East sea of Korea)
Thermal capacity	1 × 1882 MWth 2 × 2912 MWth 2 × 2825 MWth 2 × 3983 MWth
Power generation
Units operational	1 × 640 MW 1 × 1011 MW 1 × 1012 MW 2 × 996 MW 1 × 1416 MW 1 × 1418 MW
Make and model	3 × WH-F 2 × OPR-1000 2 × APR-1400
Units under const.	2 × 1340 MW APR-1400
Units decommissioned	1 × 576 MW WH-60
Nameplate capacity	7489 MW (netto)
Capacity factor	74.45% (includes Units 1 & 7)
Annual net output	43,148 GW·h (2016) (includes Units 1 & 7)
External links
Commons	Related media on Commons

Reactors

An expansion of the plant begun in 2006 added four new Korean-sourced reactors, the so-called Shin Kori reactors (shin meaning "new"). The first pair of Shin Kori reactors are of the OPR-1000 design, while the second two are the APR-1400 design. Shin Kori 1 & 2 achieved commercial operations in 2011 and 2012 respectively, with Shin Kori 3 & 4 achieving commercial operations in 2016 and 2019. Construction on two further APR-1400 reactors, known as Shin Kori-5 and Shin Kori-6, was started in April 2017 and September 2018, respectively.[1][2]

In November 2019, the reactor pressure vessel of the 1340MWe APR-1400 reactor to be housed in Shin Kori 5 was installed.[3] As of November 2019, construction on the Shin Kori 5 and 6 was 51 percent complete.[3]

Kori Nuclear Power Plant became the largest operating nuclear power plant in the world by nameplate capacity after the commissioning of Shin Kori 4. Only the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant has a larger nameplate capacity, though it was idled after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster and has not been restarted as of 2020.

Name	Capacity (net)	Design	Construction start	First criticality	Commercial start	Permanent Shutdown	NSSS	Turbine generator	A-E	Construction
Phase I
Kori-1	576 MW	WH-60	1972-08-01	1977-06-19	1978-04-29	2017-06-18	Westinghouse	GEC Turbines (Rugby)	Gilbert	Westinghouse
Kori-2	640 MW	WH-F	1977-12-23	1983-04-09	1983-07-25		Westinghouse	GEC Turbines (Rugby)	Gilbert	Westinghouse
Kori-3	1011 MW	WH-F	1979-01-01	1985-01-01	1985-09-30		Westinghouse	GEC Turbines (Rugby)	Bechtel	Hyundai
Kori-4	1012 MW	WH-F	1980-04-01	1985-10-26	1986-04-29		Westinghouse	GEC Turbines (Rugby)	Bechtel	Hyundai
Phase II
Shin Kori-1	996 MW	OPR-1000	2006-06-16	2010-07-15	2011-02-28		KHNP/KEPCO	Doosan	KOPEC	Hyundai
Shin Kori-2	996 MW	OPR-1000	2007-06-05	2011-12-27	2012-07-20		KHNP/KEPCO	Doosan	KOPEC	Hyundai
Shin Kori-3	1416 MW[4]	APR-1400	2008-10-16	2015-12-29	2016-12-20[5]		KHNP/KEPCO	Doosan	KOPEC	Hyundai
Shin Kori-4	1418 MW[6]	APR-1400	2009-08-19	2019-04-08[7]	2019-08-29[8]		KHNP/KEPCO	Doosan	KOPEC	Hyundai
Shin Kori-5	1340 MW	APR-1400	2017-04-01		2022[7]		Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown
Shin Kori-6	1340 MW	APR-1400	2018-09-20		2023[7]		Unknown	Unknown	Unknown	Unknown

Kori-1 was shutdown in June 2017 in advance of decommissioning beginning in 2022 after its spent nuclear fuel is removed.[9]

Incidents

On February 9, 2012, during a refueling outage, loss of off-site power (LOOP) occurred and emergency diesel generator (EDG) 'B' failed to start while EDG 'A' was out of service for scheduled maintenance, resulting in a station blackout (SBO). Off-site power was restored 12 minutes after the SBO condition began.

The LOOP was caused by a human error during a protective relay test of the main generator. The EDG 'B' failing to start was caused by the failure of the EDG air start system. Further investigation revealed that the utility did not exercise proper control of electrical distribution configuration to ensure the availability of the Station Auxiliary Transformer (SAT) while conducting test on the Unit Auxiliary Transformer (UAT).

After restoring off-site power through the SAT, the operators eventually recovered shutdown cooling by restoring power to a residual heat removal pump. During the loss of shutdown cooling for 19 minutes, the reactor coolant maximum temperature in the hot leg increased from 37℃ to 58.3℃ (approximately 21.3℃ rise), and the spent fuel pool temperature slightly increased from 21℃ to 21.5℃. There was no adverse effect on the plant safety as a result of this event, no radiation exposure to the workers, and no release of radioactive materials to the environment. However, inconsistent with the requirements, the licensee did not report the SBO event to the regulatory body in a timely manner and did not declare the "alert" status of the event in accordance with the plant emergency plan. The licensee reported this event to the regulatory body about a month after the event had occurred.[10]

On 2 October 2012 at 8:10 a.m., Shin Kori-1 was shut down after a warning signal indicated a malfunction in the control rod system. An investigation is currently underway to verify the exact cause of the problem.[11]

In June 2013, Kori-2 was shutdown, and Kori-1 ordered to remain offline, until safety-related control cabling with forged safety certificates is replaced.[12] Control cabling installed in the APR-1400s under construction failed flame and other tests, so need to be replaced delaying construction by up to a year.[13]

In October 2013, cable installed in Shin Kori-3 failed safety tests, including flame tests. Replacement with U.S. manufactured cable delayed the startup of the plant,[13][14] which eventually entered commercial operation 3 years late.[5]

Appearances

In the 2016 movie Pandora, the Kori Nuclear Power Plant is a main scene in the movie. The movie touches on the dangers of nuclear energy around the world and if it were to go wrong in a major city. This story also has some resemblance to the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which was caused by a tsunami. This movie features a 7.9 magnitude earthquake while the earthquake that impacted Fukushima was rated 9.1.[15][16][17]

See also

• Nuclear power in South Korea
• List of nuclear reactors in South Korea

References

1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 23 September 2018. Retrieved 17 October 2018.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 October 2018. Retrieved 17 October 2018.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
3. "Reactor vessel installed at Shin Kori 5 - Nuclear Engineering International". www.neimagazine.com. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 September 2018. Retrieved 27 April 2019.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
5. "First Korean APR-1400 enters commercial operation". World Nuclear News. 20 December 2016. Archived from the original on 24 August 2017. Retrieved 23 December 2016.
6. https://pris.iaea.org/PRIS/CountryStatistics/ReactorDetails.aspx?current=886
7. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 28 April 2019. Retrieved 27 April 2019.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
8. "Second-APR-1400-unit-starts-commercial-operation". Retrieved 3 September 2019.
9. "Korea to decommission its oldest reactor". Nuclear Engineering International. 12 June 2017. Archived from the original on 25 July 2017. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
10. "Loss of shutdown cooling due to station blackout during refueling outage". IAEA. 23 April 2012. Archived from the original on 23 June 2012. Retrieved 6 November 2012.
11. Yonhap News (2 October 2012) Nuclear reactor halts operation due to malfunction Archived 4 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine
12. "New component issues idle Korean reactors". World Nuclear News. 28 May 2013. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
13. "Recabling delays Shin Kori start ups". World Nuclear News. 18 October 2013. Archived from the original on 30 October 2013. Retrieved 15 November 2013.
14. "Shin-Kori 3 receives replacement cables". Nuclear Engineering International. 30 September 2014. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 10 March 2015.
15. Lee, Maggie (10 December 2016). "Film Review: 'Pandora'". Variety. Archived from the original on 23 January 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
16. "With Kori-1 shutdown, Pres. Moon signals major turn away from nuclear energy". Hankyoreh. 20 June 2017. Archived from the original on 23 January 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2019.
17. Park, Jin-hai (4 December 2016). "Disaster movie 'Pandora' rings true more than ever". Korea Times. Archived from the original on 23 January 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2019.

External links

• Media related to Kori Nuclear Power Plant at Wikimedia Commons
• Kori plant overview