Choi, Yearn Hong

Abstract
This article is a comparative review of longstanding failures regarding the siting of nuclear waste disposal facilities in South Korea and in the United States. Even though the South Korean situation is quite different from the US situation, they share one critically important fact: they both failed to find a site for a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in the last twenty some years. The US has designated Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as the site for a repository for high-level waste and as a spent fuel disposal site, while the Korean government for its part has yet to assign an urgent priority to the task of finding an interim storage site for these types of hazardous materials here in South Korea. Consequently, this paper confines itself to considering attempts to locate a suitable site for low-level nuclear waste management. At the present time, although the two nations are still to find a breakthrough, hopefully they can learn from each other’s experiences. Yet, politics seems to be prevailing and anti-nuke forces are strongly challenging the country’s reliance on atomic energy, even though there is at present no viable alternative. Under the circumstances, gaining public acceptance of nuclear facilities is a must, and yet this is easier said than done.
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