Tag: nuclear energy

South Korea Ranks Fourth in the World In Nuclear Energy Use

| December 1, 2015

I don’t see any issue with the high dependence on nuclear power as long as the reactors are safely designed unlike what we saw at Fukushima:

rok flag

South Korea’s reliance on nuclear power is the fourth-largest in the world while its use of renewable energy ranks near the bottom, a report showed Monday.

According to the World Factbook by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Asia’s fourth-largest economy possessed a total installed power generation capacity of 94 gigawatts (GW), placing it 13th in the world. The country’s annual electricity generation output stood at 517 terawatts (TW) placing it 11th, while it ranked 10th in terms of consumption at 482TW.

The numbers represent power generated by thermal and nuclear power plants, hydro-electric dams and renewable energy sources.

The European Union’s combined installed power capacity stood at 9,071GW, with China and the United States ranking second and third with capacitites of 1,505GW and 1,063GW each.

South Korea’s power capacity and consumption of electricity is roughly on par with its global GDP ranking that stood at 13th last year.

On the other hand, the country’s reliance on atomic power to meet its energy requirements was high.

The country receives 26.8 percent of all power from nuclear reactors, placing it behind France, Armenia and Belgium. France received 48.8 percent of its power from reactors with numbers for Armenia and Belgium standing at 34.3 percent and 30.4 percent, respectively. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Hackers Extort South Korea In Return for Not Releasing Nuclear Reactor Information

| March 13, 2015

This makes me wonder if this is the wave of the future where hackers will extort companies for money in return for not releasing sensitive information to rivals or other countries?:

rok flag

A hacker who had posted inside information on South Korea’s nuclear power plants made a fresh threat Thursday, demanding money in exchange for not handing over sensitive information to third countries.

Using an account under the name of the president of an anti-nuclear group in Hawaii, the hacker posted additional files on Twitter, which reportedly included documents concerning the country’s indigenous advanced power reactor 1400.

“Need money. Only need to meet some demands… Many countries from Northern Europe, Southeast Asia and South America are saying they will buy nuclear reactor information. Fear selling the entire information will undermine President Park (Geun-hye)’s efforts to export nuclear reactors,” the posting said.

The hacker did not say how much money he wanted but warned that South Korea will end up losing much more if it tries to save a few hundreds of millions of dollars.

Officials from the Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) said the documents released Thursday did not include any sensitive information and that they may have been obtained before the company boosted its security measures early last year that included completely cutting off its internal servers used to operate nuclear reactors from all outside access.

They earlier said they were not able to determine the nature or sensitivity of the released documents as safety protocol was blocking the downloading or opening of the files.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.