A three-day deliberative forum where a citizens' panel will debate how much South Korea should rely on nuclear power in its future electricity mix will be held starting Dec. 11. The Public Deliberation Committee on Nuclear Power, set up for the national basic plan on electricity supply and demand, has also selected nine expert members to support the deliberations. The committee had sought to include experts nominated by environmental groups, but those groups refused to put forward candidates.
The committee said on the 22nd that it approved the measures at its third meeting, held the previous day at the Korea Electric Power Infrastructure Center in Seoul's Yeongdeungpo district. The citizens' panel will deliberate from Dec. 11 to 13. The committee had earlier set the panel's size at 300 people and fixed its topic as "What kind of electricity will we live on? The role and share of nuclear power in meeting future electricity demand." Panel members will study briefing materials and complete online coursework before taking part in the discussions.
The committee also completed the nine-member expert panel. It had initially planned to have environmental groups nominate the experts in that field, but recommended them directly after the groups declined. The environment side consists of Yoon Sun-jin, a professor at Seoul National University's Graduate School of Environmental Studies; Suk Kwang-hoon, a senior researcher at the Energy Transition Forum; and Han Byung-hwa, a director at Eugene Investment & Securities. The nuclear experts are Jung Yong-hoon, a professor of nuclear and quantum engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST); Chung Bum-jin, a professor of nuclear engineering at Kyung Hee University; and Choi Sung-yeol, a professor of nuclear engineering at Seoul National University. Joining as neutral experts are Kim Jong-ik, an assistant professor at Korea Aerospace University's Graduate School of AI Convergence and Carbon Neutrality; Park Chan-kook, an assistant professor in the Division of Climate Change Convergence at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies; and Kim Chul-hyun, a senior research fellow at the Korea Energy Economics Institute. Each of the three camps — environment, nuclear and neutral — holds three seats.
The expert panel will hold its first meeting on the 27th to review and comment on the deliberation questionnaire and the direction of the briefing materials to be given to the citizens' panel. The deliberation committee will then make the final decisions. The committee reaffirmed that all discussions at the forum will take as given the country's existing Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) on greenhouse gas reductions and the first basic plan on renewable energy. It also decided that the questionnaire will not presuppose either cutting or expanding nuclear power, and will avoid any format that reads as an up-or-down vote. Instead, the panel will ask respondents for upper and lower ranges for each power source's share of generation, seeking consensus on what share nuclear power should hold in the future grid in line with the original topic.
Meanwhile, with environmental groups refusing to take part from the stage of forming the expert panel, there are concerns that conflict has surfaced at the outset. The National Action for Blocking New Nuclear Plants and a Nuclear-Free Society, a civic environmental group, disclosed that the committee had asked it to nominate experts and said: "We have already made clear that we reject the government's deceptive plan for public deliberation on nuclear power, so the request for nominations can only be seen as an attempt to secure procedural legitimacy through civil society participation." Eun Jae-ho, chairman of the deliberation committee, said it was regrettable that environmental groups had decided not to join, stressing that the committee would not lean toward either side. The committee added that it will keep the door open for the groups to participate later.