Page 6 - AsiaElec Week 29 2021

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South Korea faces power

cuts as demand rises

SOUTH KOREA SOUTH Korea’s power networks are in danger “The average operation rate of nuclear
in failing to meet demand during the present reactors has dropped significantly during this
hot weather, with the difference between supply administration. Reactors used to work at 90 to
margin falling to a low of 10% this week. 95 percent of [their] full capacity. Now it’s far
Unused supply capacity fell to a low of 8.8 below that. I think this is the cause of the power
GW, the Korea Herald reported, well under the shortage,” said Lee You-ho, an assistant profes-
previous low of 10 GW seen in 2020. sor at Seoul National University’s Department of
“The government should feel a sense of cri- Nuclear System Engineering.
sis,” said professor Huh Sung-yoon from Seoul Once having operated at over 90%, the aver-
National University of Science & Technology’s age operation rate of the nation’s nuclear power
department of Energy Policy. plants (NPPs) has continued to head south over
“We haven’t even got to the hottest months of the past three years. It remained between 60 and
the year, but the reserve margin has dropped to 75 percent since 2018, according to data from
(near) 10%. The government said earlier it could Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.
drop to single digits. We cannot rule out the pos- “There are benefits to expanding renewable
sibility of a blackout,” he told the Korea Herald. energy. But they cannot be a reliable source of
This week could be even more challenging, power because when there is no wind or sunlight
according to weather forecasts from the National we can’t produce electricity. I think the power
Weather Agency. Temperatures are expected to crunch happening now is indicative of problems
reach up to 34 degrees. in the (government’s) nuclear phase-out policy,”
The Ministry of Industry said it was con- said Lee from Seoul National University.
cerned that electricity demand could rise to As concerns grow, the government said it
94 GW in the fourth week of July, bringing the will give financial incentives to businesses that
reserve margin rate down to 4.2%, or just 4 GW shut down factories and cut power usage in a
of reserve capacity. bid to prevent electricity demand from growing
If this happens, then the government will further.
have to issue an alert on power shortages for the Other experts say curbing demand is not
first time since August 2013 in order to prevent going to solve the problem. Demand for electric-
power cuts. ity will only grow further, they say, with global
South Korea last experienced a massive warming and technological developments.
blackout in September 2011, when power was “Curbing demand could be in the right direc-
cut off from 7.5mn households and recorded tion to shift the paradigm of the government’s
KRW6.2bn ($5.43mn) in losses due to busi- energy policy. But producing enough energy
nesses and factories having to shut down. supply is equally important. Demand will obvi-
The government has in recent years closed ously grow in the future, so the government
down some nuclear reactors, and some com- should reassess whether the existing infrastruc-
mentators have claimed this has contributed to tures are capable of meeting that demand,” said
the power crisis. professor Huh.™

P6 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 29 21•July•2021