Anchor: The storage facility for South Korea's oldest nuclear power plant is projected to be at full capacity with spent nuclear fuel rods by 2016. Other power plants will experience the same problem in the near future. Massive social conflict is expected as the search begins for a new suitable and more permanent storage facility.
Our Kim In-kyung has more.
 
Report: The deadline is fast approaching to make a decision on how and where to store spent nuclear fuel rods in South Korea. The country produces about 700 tons of spent nuclear fuel annually from 23 nuclear plants.
 
Since South Korea's oldest nuclear power plant began commercial operations in 1978, the nation has produced 11,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. 

Spent nuclear fuel can be safely disposed of in three ways. Those include reprocessing the waste, building a permanent disposal facility, and building a series of temporary interim facilities and less-temporary intermediary facilities. Korea's most viable option is to build an intermediary facility, which is the method taken by 22 of 31 countries that operate nuclear power stations.

All of South Korea's spent fuel is stored in interim storage facilities, but those facilities will be filled to capacity by 2024. That leaves about ten years for the country to come up with a more-permanent intermediary storage facility. As an intermediary facility takes eight years to construct, the nation has only two years to decide on its location.

The search won't be easy,  as it took 20 years and massive social conflict before the site in Gyeongju in North Gyeongsang Province was selected for a disposal facility for low to intermediate level radioactive waste, which is less toxic than spent nuclear fuel.
 
Wendell Weart, a former fellow at U.S.-based Sandia National Laboratories and an expert in the field, says the government must raise confidence in the safety of storage facilities by conducting extensive research in such fields as geological analysis and transportation methods.
 
[Sound bite: Wendell Weart, former fellow at Sandia National Laboratories]
"Transportation. You go by many many people. You have to ensure the entire nation is safe. And that's why we're spending so much attention on the transportation of waste."
 
Researchers at Sandia say the first thing to bear in mind in selecting a site is to transparently disclose all information and to clearly show that building the facility would bring economic benefits. They cite the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, as an example, because residents believed that it would revitalize the area.
 Kim In-kyung, KBS World Radio News.