South Korea completing safety checks on all reactor containment structures

摘要

South Korea’s nuclear regulator is conductingfinal safety checks of containment structuresof the country's nuclear reactors and aims tofinish inspections by the end of this year, thenew chairman of the country's Nuclear Safetyand Security Commission has said.“There will be no reactors shut down forany problems in containment structure fromnext year,” Uhm Jae-Sik, the chairman of theNuclear Safety and Security Commission, orNSSC, said in an interview April 25. Uhm, whohas long worked at the nuclear regulator, was promoted to NSSC chairman in December.In June 2016, voids in concretecontainment walls and corrosion oncontainment liner plates, or CLPs, werediscovered in the Hanbit-2 reactor on thecountry’s southwest coast.Since then, the NSSC and the country’s stateownednuclear power operator Korea Hydro &Nuclear Power Co., or KHNP, have conductedin-depth inspections into containment structuresof the country’s 24 reactors.