Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant reactors #5 and #6 are seen in Yeonggwang, South Jeolla province, south of Seoul. South Korea's government should resume publishing polls on nuclear safety after a loss of public confidence in the sector in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster, an opposition South Korean lawmaker said. — Reuters SEOUL — South Korea's government should resume publishing polls on nuclear safety after a loss of public confidence in the sector in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster, an opposition South Korean lawmaker said on Tuesday. The call came as South Korea, whose public is traditionally seen as pro-nuclear, investigated fake safety documents for parts used in nuclear plants led to two of the country's 23 reactors being shut down last week and has raised the prospect of power shortages in the harsh Korean winter. Woo Yoon-geun, an opposition legislator in South Korea's parliament, said that the government had deliberately suppressed the polls in a bid to ensure support for plans to construct new nuclear power stations, a charge denied by the state agency that runs the polling. “They should disclose the result to the public as it is and conduct the official regular survey,” Woo said Tuesday. The polls were conducted by an industry body that promotes nuclear power which is run by The Ministry of the Knowledge Economy, a ministry which is also responsible for nuclear oversight, domestic nuclear expansion and South Korea's ambitious export plans, worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Until 2011, the polls were published annually, but since the March 2011 Fukushima accident, the world's second worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl, no survey has been published. Opposition legislators say that the ministry cannot be trusted with running the nuclear program and oversight. “It's like letting a cat run a fish market,” said Kang Chang-il, an opposition legislator who is chairman of parliament's Commerce and Energy Committee. “There is a major structural problem in the way the nuclear industry operates as officials and experts have worked in the same jobs for decades and they have been able to keep outsiders out.” Woo revealed in October in parliament that the proportion of people who thought nuclear was safe fell to 34 percent this March from 53.3 percent in 2010, before the Fukishima accident, in regular polls conducted by the Korean Nuclear Energy Promotion Agency (KONEPA). The March poll has not been published and the promotion agency said it has shifted to monthly polls as annual polls no longer reflected the true state of public opinion. However, none of the monthly polls have been published since. The most recent poll from September, also unpublished but again revealed by Woo, showed 53.3 percent thought nuclear plants are safe against 41.5 percent who did not. KONEPA said in a statement emailed to Reuters that its 2011 annual survey was not disclosed because it was a rough survey. “It was difficult to grasp accurate public opinions through a regular survey because perceptions toward nuclear power plants were very confusing,” it said. There is a lot at stake for South Korea. It plans to build another six nuclear reactors in a cluster in the southeast corner of the country by 2024 so as to lessen its dependence on imported oil, coal and liquefied natural gas. — Reuters
