[국외소식] 탐욕과 부패가 어떻게 한국의 원자력 산업을 날려 버렸는가? (MIT Technology Review)

[이승은]

MIT Technology Review는 1899년 미국 MIT에서 창립되어 세계에서 가장 오래되고 영향력있는 기술 비즈니스 매체입니다. 아래 기사는 2019년에 작성된 것이며, 한국의 원자력 산업에 대한 굵직한 역사를 정리하고 있습니다. 현재에도 읽어볼만한 의미 있는 내용이 많아 국문으로 번역하였습니다.

탐욕과 부패가 어떻게 한국의 원자력 산업을 날려 버렸는가? (MIT Technology Review)

한국은 세계의 에너지 문제에 대한 해결책을 가지고 있었다. 그리고 모든 것이 잘못되었다.

Max S. Kim                         

2019년 4월 22일

원문보기>>
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed-and-corruption-blew-up-south-koreas-nuclear-industry/

쓰나미가 일본 후쿠시마 제 1 원자력 발전소를 강타한 지 3일 후, 한국의 이명박 대통령은 축하하고 있었다. 2011년 3월 14일 그는 아랍 에미레이트(UAE)의 가장 가까운 마을에서 48킬로미터 떨어진 모래만 날리는 사막에 있었다. 이 대통령은 양국이 “백년 우정의 시작”이라고 말한 건설 프로젝트의 기공식을 주재하고 있었다. 검은 정장을 입은 한국 관리들과 흰 전통 옷을 차려 입은 에미리트 고위 관리들이 이곳을 둘러보았다. 그리고 나서 이 대통령과 UAE의 모하메드 빈 자예드 왕세자는 레드카펫에서 미소를 지으며 사진을 찍기 위해 포즈를 취했다.

2년 전, 한국의 한 컨소시엄은 현재 이 대통령이 서 있는 땅에 원자로 4기를 건설하는 186억 달러 상당의 계약을 따냈는데, 당시 이 계약은 역사상 가장 큰 원전 단일 거래였다. 아랍어로 신의 축복을 뜻하는 단어인 바라카(Barakah)라는 이름의 이 발전소는 빈 자예드에게 필사적인 막판 전화 통화로 거래를 성사시켰던 것으로 알려진 이 대통령에게 개인적인 승리였고, 한국전력공사가 입찰을 주도해 보다 경험이 많은 프랑스 경쟁사들에 맞서 승리했다고 전해지는 한국의 승리였다. 그것은 위대한 약자의 승리 이야기가 되었다. 수입 에너지에 크게 의존하는 작은 자원 빈곤 국가 한국은 1970년대에 캐나다, 프랑스, 미국으로부터 턴키 계약으로 원자로를 구입함으로써 핵 프로그램을 시작했다. 그러나 한전과 한전의 원자력 계열사인 한수원은 미국식 설계를 바탕으로 자체 모델을 빠르게 개발했다. 최초의 국산 원자로는 1995년에 가동되었고, 곧 더 많은 원자로가 그 뒤를 이었다. 결국, 대략 인디애나주의 크기인 한국은 23개의 원자로가 전체 전력 생산의 약 30%를 공급하면서 세계에서 가장 원자로 밀도가 높은 나라가 되었다. 에미레이트 사람들은 감명을 받았다.

그러나 아랍에미리트(UAE)에는 한국의 자존심 이상의 것이 걸려 있었다. 국가가 하고 있던 일이 기후 위기를 해결하는 데 도움이 될 수도 있다. 재생 에너지 생산이 극적으로 증가해 왔지만, 많은 과학자, 엔지니어, 그리고 환경 운동가들은 원자력 시스템이 화석 연료에 대한 진정으로 확장가능한 유일한 대안이라고 믿는다. 그러나 수년 동안 높은 자본 비용, 불확실한 이익, 그리고 원자력과 관련된 안전에 대한 우려는 투자자들을 낙담시키고 정부로 하여금 석탄과 가스 같은 더 싸고 더러운 연료 공급원으로 돌아가게 했다.

예를 들어, 프랑스 국영 기업 아레바는 핀란드에서 이미 예산을 수십억 달러 초과하고 예정보다 수년 늦어진 프로젝트를 가지고 있었다. 테네시주에 있는 미국의 68억 달러짜리 와츠바 1호기 원자로는 완공하는 데 23년이 걸렸고, 원래 3억 7천만 달러의 18배가 넘는 비용이 들었다. 아레바는 바라카 프로젝트에 입찰했는데 360억 달러 제안액은 한전의 거의 두 배나 높은 것으로 알려졌다. 한국의 입찰은 원자력이 화석 연료를 대체할 수 있을 만큼 깨끗하고, 안전하고, 저렴할 수 있다는 희망을 다시 불러일으켰다.

Mike Mcquade

한전은 그것을 어떻게 관리했는가? 입찰을 주도했던 이희용 전 한전 임원은 매번 전형적인 방식으로 맞춤형 공장을 설계하는 것이 아니라 동일한 템플릿을 반복적으로 구축하는 것이 핵심이라고 말했다. 이를 통해 전문성과 효율성을 향상되었고, 결과적으로 가격이 낮아졌다. 그는 서울에 있는 자신의 2인 에너지 컨설팅 회사 사무실에서 “UAE와의 계약에 앞서 우리는 지난 30~40년간 원자로를 지속적으로 건설해 왔다”며 “우리가 강력한 공급망과 전문 인력 네트워크를 유지한 것이 비용 절감의 비결이었다.“고 말했다.

대략 인디애나 주와 비슷한 크기인 한국은 23개의 

원자로가 그 나라 전체 전력 생산의 약 30%를 

공급하면서 결과적으로 세계에서 가장 원자로 

밀도가 높은 나라가 되었다.

UAE 거래의 타이밍은 운이 좋았다. 캐나다 원자력 산업 베테랑이자 바라카 프로젝트의 고문인 하워드 닐슨-시웰은 프랑스와 캐나다가 민간 원자력 강국으로서 침체되어 있었고, “한국은 세계 시장을 장악하기 바로 직전이었다.”고 말한다.

더 이상은 그런 상황이 아니다. 바라카가 착공된 지 10년도 채 되지 않아, 한국은 원자력 산업을 해체하고, 오래된 원자로를 폐쇄하고, 새로운 원자로 계획을 폐기하고 있다. 국영 에너지 회사들은 재생 에너지 쪽으로 전환되고 있다. 이명박의 유산은 무너졌고, 한국의 핵 프로그램이 기후 변화와 싸우는 데 도움이 될 수 있다는 희망은 사라졌다.

그렇다면 무엇이 잘못되었나? 비평가들은 정치, 이념, 그리고 환경 이상주의를 비난한다. 현실은 탐욕, 부패, 그리고 스캔들이다. 이것은 기후 변화와 싸우기 위한 가장 원대한 계획이 단순한 인간 기만의 희생물이 될 수 있다는 것을 상기시킨다.

재난이 닥치다.
“특히 제가 원자력 발전소 옆에 살고 있기 때문에 후쿠시마를 보는 것은 엄청난 충격이었습니다.”라고 김익중은 올해 초 서울의 가장 유명한 시민인권 단체 중 한 곳의 본부 근처의 커피숍에서 만났을 때 이렇게 말했다. 다양한 활동가들이 우리 주위에 모여 활기차게 이야기를 나누고 있었고, 몇몇 운동가들이 그와 인사를 나누기 위해 왔다: 59세의 김익중은 한국에서 가장 잘 알려진 반핵 운동가 중 한 명이다. 카리스마 있고 말솜씨가 좋은 그는 원래 동국대 미생물학과 교수였지만 저녁 뉴스에서 활발한 강의와 전문가로 반핵 운동의 대표인사가 되었다.

후쿠시마 재난이 일어나기 전까지 그 운동은 산발적인 여러 종류의 지역 단체들로 국한되었다. 일본의 위기는 사태를 더욱 절실하게 만들었다. “그것은 단지 다른 사람의 일처럼 느껴지지 않았다”고 김 교수는 말한다.

김익중 교수 자신도 인구 밀도가 높은 동남부 해안을 따라 좁은 구획에 대부분 채워져 있는 한국의 원자로의 과밀화에 대해 특히 불안해지게 되었다. 밀도는(원자로를 밀집시키는 것은) 관리와 토지 취득에 드는 비용을 절감하는 방법이었다. 그러나 원자로를 서로 가까이, 그리고 대도시 가까이 두는 것은 위험했다.

“이들 발전소들 중 하나에서 사고가 난다면 후쿠시마보다 훨씬 더 파괴적일 것입니다,”라고 김교수는 말한다. “이러한 원자로들은 주요 산업 지역과 위험할 정도로 가깝고, 고리 원전에서만 반경 30km 이내에 400만 명이 살고 있습니다.” 인구 120만 명의 도시 울산에 있는 현대 자동차 공장은 가장 가까운 원자력 발전소에서 불과 20km 떨어져 있다. 이에 비해 후쿠시마에는 같은 거리 내에 약 78,000명의 사람들이 살고 있었다.

김 교수의 대의는 정치적 지지를 얻었다. 2012년 대통령 선거에 출마했던 문재인은 그를 에너지 정책팀에 직접 영입했다. 문 후보는 최근 대선 공약으로 단계적 핵 폐기(탈원전, 탈핵)를 발표했다. 두 사람 모두 고향이 원전에 아주 근접하여 있었기 때문에 김 교수는 그런 문 후보에게 친근감을 느꼈다.

“그는 그 문제에 대해 스스로 많은 연구를 했고, 이미 존재하는 원자력에 대해 매우 확고한 개인적 확신을 가지고 있었습니다.”라고 김 교수는 웃으며 말한다. “당시 민주당 내에서는 여전히 탈원전 정책에 반대하는 사람들이 많았기 때문에 문 후보는 자신을 만류하려는 사람들을 피해 일본에서 이 같은 발표를 했습니다.”

그러나 문 후보는 2012년 대선에서 이명박의 뒤를 이은 보수당 후계자인 박근혜에게 패배했다. (한국 대통령은 5년 단임이다.) 박 대통령은 2035년까지 한국의 원자로를 39기로 늘리고 체코와 사우디아라비아와 같은 잠재적 고객국들로 판매 여행을 떠나면서 이명박의 원자력 확장 정책을 계속했다.

그러나 UAE 와의 거래에 여러 가지 타협적인(불리한) 조항이 있었다는 소문이 돌기 시작했다. 가장 심각한 주장은 이 대통령이 군사 충돌 시 아부다비에 비밀리에 무장 지원을 약속함으로써 이 사업을 확보했다는 것이다. 2011년, 한국은 UAE에 특수부대를 배치하기 시작했지만, 이 대통령은 어떠한 연관성도 부인했다.

그것은 한국의 핵 성공이 단순히 효율성과 전문성에 대한 이야기가 아닐 수도 있다는 신호였다.

충격적인 발견
2012년 9월 21일, 한수원 관계자들은 한수원 부품 공급업체의 불법 행위에 대한 외부 제보를 받았다. 박 대통령이 취임할 즈음에 내부 수사는 본격적인 범죄 수사가 되어 있었다. 검찰은 수천 개의 위조 부품이 위조된 안전문서로 뒷받침된 채 전국의 원자로에 들어갔다는 것을 발견했다. 한수원은 원자로가 여전히 안전하다고 주장했지만, 의문은 남아있었다: 부실함이 원자로가 그렇게 싼 진짜 이유였는가?

korea energy economics institute

2000년대 초반까지 한전과 한수원에서 원자로 관련 일을 했던 박종운 전 과장은 그렇게 믿었다. 그는 지름길을 택하는 것이 정확히 한국의 주요 원자로인 APR1400이 건설된 방식이라는 것을 알았다.

1986년 체르노빌 참사 이후, 대부분의 원자로 건설자업들은 많은 새로운 안전장치들을 추가했다. 한수원은 이를 따랐지만, 나중에 이러한 장치들의 천문학적인 비용으로 인해 APR1400이 외국 고객을 유치하기에는 너무 비싸다는 깨달았다.

현재 동국대학교에서 원자력공학을 가르치고 있는 박 교수는 “그들은 결국 그것들 대부분을 제거했고, 원래에 추가된 안전장치의 10~20% 정도만 유지했다.”라고 말했다.

Most of South Korea’s nuclear reactors are clustered in its densely populated southeast.world nuclear association

가장 심각한 것은 사고 발생 시 방사선 방호력을 높이기 위해 설계된 기능인 원자로 격납건물 내 추가 벽의 증설을 포기하기로 한 결정이었다. “그들은 APR1400을 ‘새로운’ 그리고 더 안전한 것으로 포장했지만, 소위 최적화는 본질적으로 이전 기준으로 후퇴한 것이었습니다.”라고 박 교수는 말한다. “이전 모델에 비해 디자인 변경이 거의 없었기 때문에, [한수원]은 많은 것을 매우 빠르게 만들 수 있었습니다.“

비용이 많이 드는 부가적인 안전장치 대부분을 없앤 한전은 UAE 원자로 유치 입찰에서 경쟁 가격을 극적으로 낮출 수 있었으나 이것은 눈에 띄지 않는 전략이었다. 바라카를 한전에 빼앗긴 후, 아레바의 앤 라우버전 CEO는 한국의 원자로 장치를 에어백과 안전벨트가 없는 차에 비유했다. 내가 박 교수에게 이 사실을 말하자 그는 동의하며 코웃음을 쳤다. “객관적으로 말해서, 만약 그것이 두 배 더 비싸다면, 그것은 약 두 배 더 안전할 것입니다”라고 그는 말했다. 그러나 당시 라우버전의 발언은 고군분투하는 경쟁자의 질투 섞인 발언으로 일축됐다.

2014년 마무리될 무렵 한수원 조사는 독직, 담합, 보증서 위조 등에 대한 광범위한 조사로 확대되었고, 총 68명이 형을 선고받았고 법원은 누적 징역 253년을 선고했다. 유죄로 인정된 당사자는 한전에서 평생 근무했던 김종신 한수원 사장과 김 전 회장이 정부로부터 ‘우호적인 대우’를 대가로 뇌물을 준 이명박 대통령의 측근 박영준씨 등이다.

몇몇 결함이 있는 부품들도 아랍에미리트 공장으로 유입되어 에미리트 관리들을 화나게 했다. “그것은 오늘날까지 여전히 문제를 만들고 있습니다,” 라고 바라카의 캐나다 고문인 닐슨-시웰이 나에게 말했다. “그들은 한국 공급망에 대한 완전한 신뢰를 잃었습니다.”

그러나 스캔들은 끝나지 않았다.

또 다른 내부고발자
올해 초 서울의 한 작은 빵집에서 김민규를 만났다. 진지하고 젊은 눈빛을 가진 44세의 작은 체구의 김 씨는 원자로 부품 제조업체인 효성중공업에서 영업부장으로 일했었다. 2010년 한수원에 판매 업무를 맡았는데 이중거래가 서류작업처럼 일상적이라는 사실을 금세 알게 됐다.

“이들 발전소들 중 하나에서 사고가 난다면 

후쿠시마보다 훨씬 더 파괴적일 것입니다,”라고 

김 씨는 말한다. “이들 원자로는 주요 산업 지역과 

위험할 정도로 가깝고, 고리 원전 반경 30km 안에만 

400만 명이 살고 있습니다.”

김씨는 “한수원 입찰에서 서로 경쟁해야 할 납품업체들이 담합해 승부를 결정하게 됐다”고 말했다. “경쟁 회사의 백발 경영진이 서로 마주 앉아 가위 바위 보를 하며 누가 특정 계약을 따낼지 결정하게 될 것입니다.” 가짜 입찰은 지정된 패배자가 실패하도록 조작된 가짜 문서에 의해 지원될 것이다. 한번은 한수원 조달담당자가 그에게 전화를 걸어 가짜 입찰서류에서 아마추어 수준의 서투른 위조를 지적하며 제대로 다시 하라고 요구했다고 그는 말했다.

이러한 관행들 중 일부는 심각한 안전상의 결함을 만들었다. 김씨는 2014년 5월 경북 한울원전으로 향하는 부하 센터 변압기 11대의 납품을 감독했는데 안전면허가 갱신되지 않은 사실을 발견했다. 부하 센터 변압기는 원자로의 주요 비상 기능으로 가는 전력의 흐름을 관리한다. 어떤 오작동이라도 있게 되면 그것은 “고속으로 질주하던 차가 급정거하는 것과 같을 것”이라고 김 씨는 내게 말했다.

그러나 효성과 경쟁사 간의 비밀 협정에 의해 승자가 결정되었고, 변압기는 두 개의 원자로에 설치되었는데 그들의 완전성은 전혀 의심을 받지 않았다. “저는 개인적으로 변압기에 불이 붙은 약 300건의 사례를 알고 있었습니다. 그들은 믿을 수 없을 정도로 불안정합니다.”라고 김 씨는 눈썹을 찡그리며 말한다. “제 고향은 원자로에서 불과 몇 킬로미터 떨어져 있고, 그곳에서 사고가 나면 근처에 사는 친척들이 위험에 처할 수 있습니다.”

2015년, 후쿠시마와 같은 사고를 우려한 김 씨는 회사의 내부 고발 시스템을 통해 부패를 신고하기로 결심했다. 유일한 결과는 그가 해고되었다는 것이었다.

“내가 얼마나 순진했는지”라고 그가 슬픈 미소를 지으며 말한다. 그는 결국 한국의 경쟁 규제 기관인 공정거래위에 갔고, 공정거래위원회는 이 사건을 검찰로 송치했다. 2018년 그는 자신의 이야기를 언론에 공개했고 몇 달 후, 김 씨의 제보를 근거로, 검찰은 효성과 공모자인 LS산전 직원 6명을 담합 혐의로 기소했으나 그가 믿기로는 부패의 표면만을 건드린 것에 지나지 않은 결과였다.

곧 더 많은 거짓이 드러났다. 2018년, 정부의 수년간의 부인 이후 김태영 전 국방부 장관은 UAE와의 군사적 측면 협정에 대한 소문이 사실이라고 인정했다: 그는 바라카 협정을 체결하기 위해 필사적인 시도로 군사협약을 직접 주도했다. 그는 한국 언론에 “위험한 상황이 발생할 위험이 낮았고, 발생하더라도 우리가 유연하게 대응할 수 있다고 봤습니다”라고 말했다. “실제 분쟁이 발생할 경우 그때 국회 비준을 요청하면 될 거라고 생각했습니다.”

Mike Mcquade

문 대통령이 등장하다
2016년 9월, 대한민국 경상북도 경주시에서 규모 5.8의 지진이 발생하였고 한국 역사상 가장 강도가 높은 것이었다. 반핵 운동가 김익중 교수는 이 도시에 살고 있었는데, 창문이 덜컹거리고 비상 사이렌이 요란하게 울려서 충격을 받았던 것을 기억한다. 그는 인근 논으로 피신했고, 몇 시간 뒤 집으로 돌아오자 철렁하는 불안감이 엄습했다. 경주는 자체 발전소 하나와 인접한 부산과 울산에 2기의 원자로가 더 있는 세계 최대 원자로 클러스터의 중심지였다. 이번 지진은 원자로 밑의 지진 단층이 이전에 생각했던 것보다 더 지진에 취약하다는 김 교수의 두려움을 확인시켜 주었다. 다음날 아침 인근 월성공장을 방문한 관계자들은 김익중 교수와 그의 정치인 친구 문재인에게 아무런 피해가 없었다고 안심시켰지만, 김 교수는 문제가 무시되고 있다는 느낌을 떨칠 수 없었다.

문재인 대통령을 비판하는 사람들은 

탈핵(원자력 단계적 폐기)를 이념적이라고 

비난했다. 그러나 점점 더 많은 한국인들이 

소위 말하는 “핵 마피아”에 대한 불신을 키워왔다.

그는 “내가 원전 반대 운동을 처음 시작했을 때 한수원 관리자들이 한국에서 규모 5.0 이상의 지진은 절대 일어나지 않을 것이라고 말했다”고 말한다. “하지만 거기에서 그런 일이 있었어요.” 월성 공장을 방문한 지 며칠 후, 김 교수는 그 발전소의 지진계 중 하나가 수년 동안 부서져 있었다는 것을 발견했다.

비록 한국의 법은 건설에 앞서 잠재적인 원자로 부지에 대한 지진 단층 평가를 요구하고 있지만, 이 법규의 모호한 문구와 느슨한 집행으로 실효성이 없어졌다고 말한다. “한국은 아직 종합적인 단층 평가를 하지 않았습니다.”라고 김 교수는 말한다. “원전부지 선정에서 지진 위험이 전혀 충분히 고려되지 않았습니다.” 사실, 한국의 첫 번째 종합 단층 지도는 2017년에야 시작되어 2041년이 되어야 완성될 것으로 예상된다.

부패 스캔들과 지진은 문재인의 탈원전 정책에 대한 대중의 욕구를 불러일으켰다. 그러나 최후의 일격은 업계의 정치 세력들 자신들의 몰락으로 이루어졌다.

박근혜의 대통령직은 2017년에 훨씬 더 큰 부패 스캔들이 드러나면서 무너졌다. 국내 최고 재벌로부터 뇌물을 받고 대통령 권한을 남용한 혐의로 기소된 그녀는 2017년 3월 10일 탄핵되어 2018년 4월 징역 24년형을 선고받았다. 이명박도 몇 개월 후에 비슷한 운명을 맞게 되었다. 뇌물수수 및 횡령 혐의로 유죄 판결을 받은 그는 15년형을 선고받았다.

international atomic energy agency

문 대통령은 박 대통령의 탄핵 직후 취임했으며, 그는 탈원전 공약을 고수해 왔다.

김익중씨는 “현재의 탈원전 정책은 2012년 선거운동 당시 우리가 제안한 4대 기본 원칙에서 비롯됐다”고 말한다. “노후 원자로는 수명 연장을 받지 않을 것이고, 추가 원자로는 건설되지 않을 것이며, 전기 사용은 더 효율적으로 될 것이며, 우리는 재생 에너지로 전환할 것입니다.”

탈원전(원자력의 단계적 폐지)은 60년이 걸릴 것이다. 문 대통령이 취임했을 때 이미 반쯤 완공된 두 개의 새로운 원자로는 2022년과 2023년쯤 가동될 예정이고, 현재 가동 중인 원자로는 수명이 다할 것이다. 한편, 정부는 체코와 사우디아라비아와 같은 잠재적 구매자들에게 계속해서 구애하고 있다. 그러나 호황은 없었다: 사실 이명박 대통령은 80기의 원자로를 수출하겠다고 약속했지만, 한국은 지금까지 단 1기의 원자로도 수출하지 못했다.

문 대통령의 비판자들은 – 그들 중 많은 이들이 여전히 불명예스러운 이 대통령과 박 대통령의 지지자들로 – 문 대통령의 탈원전 정책을 “이념적”이라고 비난했는데, 정치적 목적을 위해 그의 전임자들의 업적을 의도적으로 뒤집는 것이라는 거다. 그러나 핵에 대한 한국의 감소된 욕구는 더 깊은 환멸을 시사한다.

“원칙적으로, 저는 한수원이 만든 어떤 것도 믿지 않습니다,”라고 부패 내부 고발자인 김민규씨는 말한다. 점점 더 많은 한국인들이 한수원, 학계, 정부, 금전적 이익집단을 아우르는 긴밀한 친핵 복합체인 소위 “핵 마피아”에 대한 전반적으로 불신을 갖게 되었다. 한편 정부 감시기관인 원자력안전위원회는 회전문 인사, 서로 봐주기(back-scratching), 그리고 마땅히 시행해야 하는 안전 규정을 무시한 것으로 비난을 받아왔다.

10년이 지난 지금, 이명박의 남한 핵강국의 꿈은 마침내 생명을 다한 것처럼 보인다. 최근까지 원자력의 챔피언으로 여겨졌던 중국에서도 비슷한 반전이 시작되고 있다. 거기에서도 한국에서처럼 후쿠시마는 대중의 두려움을 일깨우고 정부가 더 엄격한 안전 기준을 채택하도록 강요했는데, 이는 이제 원자력 발전 비용을 감당할 수 없을 정도로 오르게 할 위협이 되고 있다. 세계의 다른 주요 원자력 생산국들 중 오직 러시아만이 국내외에서 여전히 적극적으로 더 많은 원자로를 건설하고 있다. 한국의 원자력 산업의 쇠퇴에는 평범한 국내적 원인이 있었을지 모르지만, 기후 변화 대응에 미치는 영향은 실로 매우 세계적인 것일 수 있다.

번역 이득우 / 감수 이숙명

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How greed and corruption blew up South Korea’s nuclear industry 
Seoul had a solution to the world’s energy problems. Then everything went wrong.

By Max S. Kim                           

April 22, 2019

Three days after a tsunami battered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, South Korean president Lee Myung-bak was celebrating. It was March 14, 2011, and he was in the United Arab Emirates, on a dusty, featureless stretch of desert 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the nearest village. Lee was presiding over a groundbreaking ceremony for a construction project that the two countries said marked the start of a “hundred-year friendship.” A retinue of dark-suited South Korean officials and Emirati dignitaries in flowing white thawbs toured the site. Then Lee and the UAE’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed smiled and posed for photographs on a red carpet.

Two years earlier, a South Korean consortium had won an $18.6 billion contract to build four nuclear reactors on the ground where Lee now stood—at the time, the single biggest reactor deal in history. The plant—named Barakah, after the Arabic word for a divine blessing—was a personal triumph for Lee, who had reportedly swung the deal with a desperate 11th-hour phone call to bin Zayed, and a victory for his country, whose Korea Electric Power Corporation, Kepco, had led the bid and won out against more experienced French competition. It made for a great underdog story. A small, resource poor nation that relied heavily on imported energy, South Korea had kick-started its nuclear program in the 1970s by buying reactors on turnkey contracts from Canada, France, and the United States. But Kepco and its nuclear affiliate, KHNP, quickly developed their own model based on an American design. The first homegrown reactor was operational by 1995, and more soon followed. Eventually South Korea, which is roughly the size of Indiana, became the most reactor-dense country in the world, with 23 reactors providing about 30% of its total electricity generation. The Emiratis had been impressed.

More was at stake in the UAE than just South Korea’s national pride, however. What the country was doing could help solve the climate crisis. While renewable-energy production has grown dramatically, many scientists, engineers, and environmental activists believe a nuclear power system is the only truly scalable alternative to fossil fuels. Yet over the years the high capital costs, uncertain profits, and safety concerns associated with nuclear power have discouraged investors and led governments back to cheaper, dirtier fuel sources like coal and gas.

The French state-owned company Areva, for example, had a project in Finland that was already billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. The US’s $6.8 billion Watts Bar Unit 1 reactor in Tennessee had taken 23 years to complete, and cost more than 18 times its original $370 million price tag. Areva had bid for the Barakah project, but its $36 billion proposal was reportedly almost twice as high as Kepco’s. The Korean bid rekindled the hope that nuclear could be clean, safe, and cheap enough to replace fossil fuels.

How did Kepco manage it? Lee Hee-yong, a former Kepco executive who had led the bid, told me the key was repetition—building to the same template over and over, rather than designing customized plants each time as was typical. This increased expertise and efficiency, and the result was lower prices. “Prior to the UAE deal, we had been continuously building reactors for the past 30 or 40 years,” he told me in the office of his two-person boutique energy consultancy in Seoul. “The fact that we maintained a strong supply chain and network of specialized workers was key to keeping costs low.”

South Korea, which is roughly the size of Indiana,

eventually became the most reactor-dense country

in the world, with 23 reactors providing about 30%

of the country’s total electricity generation.

The timing of the UAE deal was auspicious: France and Canada were stagnating as civil nuclear powers, says Howard Neilson-Sewell, a Canadian nuclear industry veteran and advisor to the Barakah project. “South Korea was right on the cusp of taking over the world market.”

Not anymore. Less than a decade after Barakah broke ground, Korea is dismantling its nuclear industry, shutting down older reactors and scrapping plans for new ones. State energy companies are being shifted toward renewables. Lee’s legacy has collapsed, and the hope that Seoul’s nuclear program could help combat climate change has dwindled to nothing.

So what went wrong? Critics blame politics, ideology, and environmental idealism. The reality: greed, corruption, and scandal. It’s a reminder that the grandest plans for fighting climate change can fall prey to simple human venality.

Disaster strikes
“Watching Fukushima was a tremendous shock, especially because I live next to a nuclear power plant myself,” Kim Ik-joong told me when we met earlier this year at a coffee shop close to the headquarters of one of Seoul’s most renowned civic-rights groups. Activists of various stripes were gathered around us, talking animatedly, and some came over to greet him: Kim, 59, is one of the country’s best-known antinuclear campaigners. Charismatic and well-spoken, he was originally a microbiology professor at Dongguk University but has become the face of the antinuclear movement as a prolific lecturer and pundit on the evening news.

Up until the Fukushima disaster, that movement had been limited to a scattered assortment of local groups. The crisis in Japan brought things closer to home. It “just didn’t feel like someone else’s business,” says Kim.

Kim himself grew particularly uneasy about the overcrowding of South Korea’s reactors, which are mostly packed into a narrow strip along the densely populated southeastern coast. The density was a way of cutting costs on administration and land acquisition. But putting reactors close to one another—and to large cities—was risky.

“An accident at just one of these plants would be far more devastating than Fukushima,” says Kim. “These reactors are dangerously close to major industrial areas, and there are four million people living within a 30-kilometer radius of the Kori plant alone.” Hyundai’s auto plant in Ulsan, a city of 1.2 million, is just 20 km from the nearest nuclear power plant. Fukushima, by comparison, had only around 78,000 people living within the same distance.

Kim’s cause found political support. In 2012, Moon Jae-in, who was running for president, personally recruited him to his energy policy team. Moon had recently announced a nuclear phase-out as a campaign pledge. Kim felt an affinity to Moon: both of their hometowns stood in the shadow of a nuclear power plant.

“He had done a lot of research on the issue himself, and already had very firm personal convictions about exiting nuclear,” Kim says with a smile. “Back then, there were still a lot of people in [Moon’s] Democratic Party who were against a nuclear-exit policy, so Moon made the announcement in Japan, away from anybody who would try to dissuade him.”

However, Moon lost the 2012 election to Park Geunhye, the conservative successor to Lee Myung-bak. (South Korean presidents can serve only a single term.) Park continued Lee’s nuclear expansion policy, pledging to increase South Korea’s reactor fleet to 39 units by 2035 and making sales trips to potential client states such as the Czech Republic and Saudi Arabia.

But rumors started swirling that the UAE deal had come with a number of compromising provisions. The most serious allegation was that Lee had secured the project by secretly promising armed support to Abu Dhabi in the event of a military conflict. In 2011, South Korea did begin deploying special forces to the UAE, but Lee denied any connection.

It was a sign that South Korea’s nuclear success might not just be a simple story of efficiency and expertise.

A shocking discovery
On September 21, 2012, officials at KHNP had received an outside tip about illegal activity among the company’s parts suppliers. By the time President Park had taken office, an internal probe had become a full-blown criminal investigation. Prosecutors discovered that thousands of counterfeit parts had made their way into nuclear reactors across the country, backed up with forged safety documents. KHNP insisted the reactors were still safe, but the question remained: was corner-cutting the real reason they were so cheap?

Park Jong-woon, a former manager who worked on reactors at Kepco and KHNP until the early 2000s, believed so. He had seen that taking shortcuts was precisely how South Korea’s headline reactor, the APR1400, had been built.

After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, most reactor builders had tacked on a slew of new safety features. KHNP followed suit but later realized that the astronomical cost of these features would make the APR1400 much too expensive to attract foreign clients.

“They eventually removed most of them,” says Park, who now teaches nuclear engineering at Dongguk University. “Only about 10% to 20% of the original safety additions were kept.”

Most significant was the decision to abandon adding an extra wall in the reactor containment building—a feature designed to increase protection against radiation in the event of an accident. “They packaged the APR1400 as ‘new’ and safer, but the so-called optimization was essentially a regression to older standards,” says Park. “Because there were so few design changes compared to previous models, [KHNP] was able to build so many of them so quickly.”

Having shed most of the costly additional safety features, Kepco was able to dramatically undercut its competition in the UAE bid, a strategy that hadn’t gone unnoticed. After losing Barakah to Kepco, Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon likened the Korean unit to a car without airbags and seat belts. When I told Park this, he snorted in agreement. “Objectively speaking, if it’s twice as expensive, it’s going to be about twice as safe,” he said. At the time, however, Lauvergeon’s comments were dismissed as sour words from a struggling rival.

By the time it was completed in 2014, the KHNP inquiry had escalated into a far-reaching investigation of graft, collusion, and warranty forgery; in total, 68 people were sentenced and the courts dispensed a cumulative 253 years of jail time. Guilty parties included KHNP president Kim Jong-shin, a Kepco lifer, and President Lee Myung-bak’s close aide Park Young-joon, whom Kim had bribed in exchange for “favorable treatment” from the government.

Several faulty parts had also found their way into the UAE plants, angering Emirati officials. “It’s still creating a problem to this day,” Neilson-Sewell, the Canadian advisor to Barakah, told me. “They lost complete faith in the Korean supply chain.”

The scandals, however, were not over.

Another whistleblower
Earlier this year, at a small bakery in Seoul, I met Kim Min-kyu. A slight 44-year-old man with earnest, youthful eyes, Kim used to be a senior sales manager at Hyosung Heavy Industries, a manufacturer of reactor parts. In 2010, he was put in charge of selling to KHNP and quickly discovered that double-dealing was as routine as paperwork. 

“An accident at just one of these plants would be far

more devastating than Fukushima,” says Kim.

“These reactors are dangerously close to major industrial areas,

and there are four million people living within a 30-kilometer

radius of the Kori plant alone.”

“Suppliers who were supposed to be competing with one another colluded to decide who would win [KHNP bids],” Kim told me. “You’d have a group of white-haired executives from competing firms sitting across from each other, playing rock-paper-scissors to decide who would take certain contracts.” Dummy bids would then be supported by fake documents, doctored to ensure that the designated loser would fail. On one occasion, he says, an irate KHNP procurement manager called him to point out an amateurish forgery in a fake bidding document—and demanded he do it again, properly.

Some of these practices constituted serious lapses in safety. In May 2014, Kim oversaw the delivery of 11 load center transformers bound for the Hanul Nuclear Power Plant in North Gyeongsang province, only to discover that their safety licenses hadn’t been renewed. Load center transformers manage the flow of power to key emergency functions at reactors; any malfunction, Kim told me, would be “like a hurtling car suddenly stalling.”

Yet a secret agreement between Hyosung and competitors had designated it the winner, and the transformers were installed into two reactors, their integrity unquestioned. “I personally knew of around 300 cases where those transformers caught on fire. They’re incredibly unstable,” says Kim, his brow furrowed. “My hometown is actually just a few kilometers from those reactors, and an accident there could endanger my relatives who live nearby.”

In 2015, fearing a Fukushima-like accident, Kim decided to report the corruption through his company’s internal whistleblowing system. The only result was that he was fired.

“How naïve I was,” he says, flashing a rueful grin. He eventually went to the country’s competition regulator, which referred the case to prosecutors. In 2018, he took his story to the media. A few months later, on the basis of tips from Kim, prosecutors charged six employees from Hyosung and co-conspirator LS Industrial Systems with collusion—an outcome that Kim believes only scratches the surface of the corruption.

More untruths soon came to light. In 2018, after years of government denial, former defense minister Kim Taeyoung admitted that the rumors about the military side agreement with the UAE were, in fact, true: he had overseen it himself in a desperate attempt to seal the Barakah deal. “There was low risk of a dangerous situation arising, and even if it did, we believed that our response could be flexible,” he told South Korean media. “In the event of an actual conflict, I figured that we would ask for parliamentary ratification then.”

Moon rising
In September 2016, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake—the strongest recorded tremor in South Korea’s history—struck the southeastern city of Gyeongju. Kim Ik-joong, the antinuclear activist, lives in the city and remembers being shocked by the rattling windows and blaring emergency sirens. He fled to a nearby rice paddy, and when he returned home several hours later, a sinking anxiety set in. Gyeongju was the heart of the world’s largest cluster of nuclear reactors, with its own plant and two more in adjoining Busan and Ulsan. The quake confirmed Kim’s fears: the seismic faults underneath the reactors were more earthquake-prone than previously thought. The next morning, on a visit to the nearby Wolsong plant, officials assured Kim and his politician friend Moon Jae-in that no damage had been done, but Kim couldn’t shake the feeling that the problem was being ignored.

President Moon Jae-in’s critics have denounced

the nuclear phase-out as ideological. But more

and more South Koreans have developed a mistrust

of what they call “the nuclear mafia.”

“When I first started campaigning against nuclear power, KHNP managers told me that an earthquake greater than a magnitude of 5.0 would never happen in South Korea,” he says. “But there it was.” Several days after his visit to the Wolsong plant, Kim discovered that one of the plant’s seismographs had been broken for years.

Though South Korean law requires seismic fault assessments of any potential reactor site prior to construction, Kim says that the statute’s vague wording and loose enforcement have rendered it ineffective. “South Korea still hasn’t done a comprehensive capable fault assessment,” says Kim. “Earthquake risk wasn’t sufficiently accounted for at all in reactor site selection.” In fact, South Korea’s first comprehensive fault map was only started in 2017 and is expected to take until 2041 to complete.

The corruption scandal and earthquake stoked public appetite for Moon Jae-in’s policy of nuclear exit. But the coup de grâce was delivered by the failings of the industry’s political champions themselves.

Park Geun-hye’s presidency fell apart in 2017 as a much larger corruption scandal was uncovered. Accused of receiving bribes from the nation’s top conglomerates and abusing her presidential power, she was impeached on March 10, 2017, and sentenced to 24 years in prison in April 2018. Lee Myung-bak met a similar fate just months later: found guilty of bribery and embezzlement, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Moon took office shortly after Park’s impeachment, and he has held fast to his promise of a nuclear exit. 

“The current phase-out policy stemmed from the four foundational principles we proposed at the time [of the 2012 campaign],” says Kim Ik-joong. “Older reactors wouldn’t receive life-span extensions; no additional reactors would be built; electricity use would be made more efficient; and we would shift toward renewables.”

The phase-out will take 60 years. Two new reactors that were already halfway completed when Moon took office are still scheduled to come online by 2022 and 2023, and those in operation now will live out their lifetimes. Meanwhile, the administration continues to court potential buyers like the Czech Republic and Saudi Arabia. But there has been no boom: in fact, while Lee promised to export 80 reactors, so far South Korea has yet to export a single one.

Moon’s critics, many of them still adherents of the disgraced presidents Lee and Park, have denounced the phase-out as “ideological”—a deliberate reversal of his predecessors’ accomplishments for political purposes. Yet the country’s shrinking appetite for nuclear suggests a deeper disillusionment.

“On principle, I don’t trust anything that KHNP built,” says Kim Min-kyu, the corruption whistleblower. More and more South Koreans have developed a general mistrust of what they refer to as “the nuclear mafia”— the close-knit pro-nuclear complex spanning KHNP, academia, government, and monied interests. Meanwhile the government watchdog, the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission, has been accused of revolving door appointments, back-scratching, and a disregard for the safety regulations it is meant to enforce.

A decade after it began, Lee Myung-bak’s dream of South Korean nuclear ascendency seems to have finally sputtered out. A similar reversal is beginning in China, until recently seen as nuclear energy’s biggest champion. There, as in South Korea, Fukushima awakened public fears and forced the government to adopt tougher safety standards, which now threaten to push the cost of nuclear power out of reach. Of the world’s other major producers of nuclear power, only Russia is still aggressively building more reactors both at home and abroad. The decline of Korea’s nuclear industry may have had prosaic domestic causes, but its effect on the fight against climate change may be very global indeed.