Latest news with #APR1400
Korea Herald
a day ago
- Business
- Korea Herald
KHNP denied access to power plant projects in N. America, Europe under Westinghouse deal: sources
The state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) has been prohibited from bidding for new power plant projects in North America and the European Union (EU), excluding the Czech Republic, and other countries under its agreement with US energy firm Westinghouse over an intellectual property (IP) dispute, industry sources said Tuesday. Under the agreement signed in January, the KHNP is only allowed to sign fresh deals in the Philippines, Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Egypt, Brazil, Argentina, Jordan, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, according to the sources. But the Korean company is banned from bidding for new nuclear power plant deals in North America and Britain, Japan, Ukraine and EU nations, except for the Czech Republic. The KHNP and Westinghouse signed the settlement deal in January this year after the latter accused the Korean firm of infringing on its IP, claiming the KHNP's APR 1000 and APR1400 plant designs utilize its licensed technology. The deal removed a major hurdle for the KHNP-led Korean consortium to sign a final contract in June, with an estimated value of 26 trillion won, to build two nuclear power units in the Czech Republic. The Czech deal, which marked South Korea's first overseas nuclear power plant contract since 2009, was initially expected to open new doors for Korean firms seeking business opportunities in Europe. Earlier in the day, KHNP President Whang Joo-ho confirmed his company has closed operations in Poland amid speculations that its deal with Westinghouse influenced the decision. Poland is the fourth European country where the KHNP confirmed its business closure, following Sweden, Slovenia and the Netherlands. "After the new Polish administration took office ... the country decided to drop the state-owned enterprise projects (in the nuclear power sector) ... and that is why we withdrew our business there," Whang said during a meeting with the parliamentary industry committee. It also reportedly includes a condition requiring Korean companies to pass the latter's technology independence verification when independently developing and exporting next-generation nuclear reactors. The 50-year deal is also said to include provisions requiring the KHNP to sign a goods and services purchase contract worth about $650 million with Westinghouse per export of a single nuclear reactor, and to pay $175 million per reactor in technology licensing fees. Asked whether the KHNP believes the deal with Westinghouse was fair, Whang said, "As the party accepting the terms, I cannot say it was fair," but added, "I believe it is something we can endure and still make a profit from." Whang refused to confirm the details of the deal, citing a nondisclosure agreement. Earlier in the day, the presidential office said it has ordered the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy to review whether the deal was signed under due process. (Yonhap)
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Miliband has got his nuclear plans wrong. Here's what we should do
Yesterday, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband announced a new 'golden age' of nuclear energy. But with the wrong technology, unfit regulation and no real delivery plan, his golden age already looks tarnished. He's pinning his hopes on an already out-dated large-scale nuclear technology that has been plagued by construction problems in Finland, France and the UK and whose developer EDF is already moving on to a newer version. And while his commitment to small modular reactors (SMRs) is commendable, they are at best a decade away with no examples in existence in the West. While it is tempting to think you could simply hoist a submarine reactor onto a dock and call it a power station, this is unrealistic. Military reactors are designed for stealth, speed and war, not for civilian safety, grid connectivity or cost-efficiency. So Rolls Royce has had to develop an entirely new concept. In fact the current market leaders in Western SMR-design are GE-Hitachi whose small boiling water reactors recently began construction in Canada. However, given the imminent retirement of all but one of our existing large nuclear reactors, bigger is better for the nuclear ambition, and in this, Miliband's plan is woefully inadequate. Luckily, there is a solution ready and waiting: the Korean APR1400 design which has been successfully completed in both South Korea and UAE with eight units now in operation, built in an average of 8.5 years, at an average cost of $5-6 billion. Far cheaper than the £40 billion some analysts expect Sizewell C to cost. Around £6 billion is thought to have been spent already. The Korean design has been approved by both US and European regulators and should be a no-brainer for the UK: build what works. But to do this we need to take an axe to our overgrown thicket of nuclear regulation. The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) bizarrely reports to the Department for Work and Pensions, not the Energy Secretary, and sits beyond any meaningful strategic oversight. This well-intentioned separation has resulted in a regulatory regime akin to requiring 57 seat belts in your car – technically thorough, but practically unhinged. One requirement is that each new reactor design must expose workers to even less radiation than its predecessor. That might sound like progress, until you realise that radiation levels inside a modern nuclear plant are already so low they're hard to detect at all. The plant manager at one of our old Advanced Gas Cooled reactors (AGRs) once told me that the only time his radiation detector registered anything other than zero was when he left it on his desk and the sun shone on it. Nuclear workers are typically exposed to more radiation on the street than inside the plant. At this point, further exposure reductions offer no safety benefit. They just add cost, complexity and delay. The environmental regulators are as bad. The Sizewell C design is exactly the same as Hinkley Point C and the site is almost identical to Sizewell A and B. So why on earth were 40,000 pages of environmental statements required? This regulatory excess is expensive and draws out the process of approving new reactors beyond what is remotely reasonable. Britain risks running out of electricity. We had a near miss blackout event in January that was likely a factor in the renewal of the controversial biomass subsidies. We are also likely to see further small extensions to our ageing AGRs which are nearing the ends of their lives. But with a third of our fleet of gas power stations dating back to the 1990s and expected to retire in the next five years, Britain can ill afford delays to new nuclear plants. Particularly not the sort of avoidable delays our overzealous regulators have created. If Miliband is serious both about his golden age of nuclear, and more particularly, keeping the lights on in a decarbonised world, he needs to be far more ambitious. A truly serious plan would involve a programme of 5-6 large-scale reactors, and since the Koreans have the best track record, we should sign them up. He needs to get tough on the regulators. Abolishing ONR altogether and creating a new regulator, as part of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, with staff who are experts in risk management as well as nuclear safety, and severely curtailing the power of environmental regulators. One of the biggest benefits of nuclear power is its high energy density: it uses very little land to create a lot of energy. That should be taken into account, with regulators forced to look at the national picture rather than taking a strictly site by site approach. And he needs to stop wasting time with incentives for investors. They are not interested in the risk of our shambolic regulatory landscape. He should face this reality, and commit public money for the construction of the first two new reactors, re-financing once construction is completed. This would be a profitable strategy: the Government can borrow more cheaply than the private sector, the Korean design (with suitable regulatory restraint) can be built faster than the Hinkley design, meaning lower financing costs, and nuclear reactors are very profitable to run so investors will be very interested once the risky construction phase is over. He could even offer shares to the public in a 21st Century version of 'Just tell Sid' which remains the most successful public share subscription in UK history, and would perfectly align with Chancellor Rachel Reeves' ambition for UK savers to deploy their capital in the interests of national infrastructure. We need more than romantic notions of golden ages if we're to keep the lights on. It's time for hard-headed decisions, and a concrete, realistic and funded plan for success. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
