Can Korea secure its nuclear future before it’s too late?
South Korea’s nuclear industry stands at a critical crossroads.
Although it entered the nuclear age later than many advanced countries, South Korea has become one of the world’s leading nuclear power producers since bringing its first commercial reactor online in 1978. Today it operates 26 reactors. For decades, the country successfully relied on a model that imported all enriched nuclear fuel while storing spent fuel at reactor sites, effectively maintaining a nuclear industry without domestic uranium enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing.
That model, however, is reaching its limits. The war in Ukraine and intensifying U.S.-Russia rivalry have exposed vulnerabilities in the global nuclear fuel supply chain. At the same time, demand for carbon-free electricity has surged as countries pursue carbon neutrality and AI-driven industries consume ever more power. Future reactors will also require advanced fuels, including high-assay low-enriched uranium, or Haleu, accident-tolerant fuels and transuranic fuels. Without enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, South Korea risks falling behind in the next generation of nuclear technology.