Korea approves 10 more years for Kori 3 and 4, restarts planned for 2027
Serguey Asael Shinder1 min readSouth Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission has approved a further 10 years of operation for units 3 and 4 of the Kori nuclear power plant near Busan, World Nuclear News reports. The two 1,025 MWe Westinghouse pressurised water reactors received operating licences in 1984 and 1985; their 40-year design lives expired in September 2024 and August 2025, and both are currently shut down. Operator Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power plans to restart them in the first half of 2027. The extensions run to September 2034 for unit 3 and August 2035 for unit 4.
KHNP applied in November 2023. The Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety carried out a four-year safety review, along with a radiation environmental impact assessment. The commission said that although the units share a design, their operating and maintenance histories differ, so ageing and remaining life were assessed separately for each.
KHNP's president linked the decision to rising electricity demand from semiconductor and AI industries. Kori unit 1 was permanently shut in 2017 and is being decommissioned; unit 2 restarted in April after being offline since its licence expired in April 2023. South Korea has 26 operable reactors, generating about a third of its electricity.
What it means
Two reactors that have been idle for over a year return as roughly 2 GW of firm capacity without a new build. The pattern at Kori — licence lapses, units sit idle through a multi-year review, then restart — is the practical cost of starting renewal late; KHNP filed less than a year before unit 3's licence ran out.