On June 22nd, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited the nuclear shop of Doosan Enerbility, the sole nuclear component manufacturer in Korea, which is located in Changwon of Gyeongnam Province. This marks the first-ever visit made by a Korean President to a nuclear shop.
Accompanying President Yoon at the visit were Lee Chang-Yang, Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy(MOTIE); Lee Young, Minister of SMEs and Startups(MSS); Park Geewon, Chairman & CEO of Doosan Enerbility; Jung Soon-Won, Chairman of Doosan Enerbility’s Cooperation Council and CEO of Hwashin Bolt, as well as some twenty CEOs of Doosan’s nuclear business partners.
President Yoon first stopped by the storage area at which lay the equipment and materials that were to be delivered to the Shin-Hanul Nuclear Power Plant Units 3 and 4, for which construction had been halted, leading to suspended manufacturing of the nuclear components. The cast and forged materials that were to be used on the main components, such as the nuclear reactor and steam generator, are all currently left idle in the storage space. While touring the nuclear shop, the President peered with interest at a reactor head that is scheduled to be delivered to the Shin-Kori Nuclear Power Plant Unit 6.
The President then visited the forging shop to look at a 17,000-ton forging press, the world’s largest to date. This forging press had been installed by Doosan Enerbility in 2017 based on a financial investment amounting to over 200 billion won, an action that had been taken in response to the South Korean government’s Basic Plan on Electricity Demand & Supply released in 2014 and as part of preparations for the growing demand expected for Korean-type ultra-large nuclear components.
After the shop tour, President Yoon held talks with local companies in the nuclear sector, a meeting hosted by Doosan Enerbility and jointly attended by the heads of some 20 nuclear component manufacturers based in the Changwon region. The MOTIE Minister Lee Chang-Yang and MSS Minister Lee Young assured the attendees of their commitment to support growth of the nuclear energy ecosystem and provide financial support to the related small-and-medium sized enterprises.
Doosan Enerbility Chairman Park Geewon provided a status overview of the nuclear business and gave a presentation titled “Five Key Initiatives for Achieving Shared Growth with Nuclear Business Partners,” which includes measures such as assisting the partners on securing more work, providing financial support, helping partners with enhancing their technological competitiveness, providing support on developing future growth engines and helping partners penetrate global markets. To help partners secure work, once construction resumes for the Shin-Hanul Units 3 and 4, Doosan Enerbility plans to place early orders for manufacturing of the nuclear components. As for financial support, Doosan aims to provide advance payments to help facilitate the partners’ business normalization and will also be expanding its 5+years long-term supplier agreement system. Additional financial support plans were also revealed, such as increasing the existing shared growth fund of 24 billion won to a larger sum of 84 billion won. In order to help the partners find future growth engines, Doosan plans to secure orders for fabrication of SMRs in the domestic and global markets, through which the company aims to firmly establish a robust supply chain for the related equipment and materials. Joint participation in nuclear power-linked hydrogen production projects that aim at generating clean hydrogen is also included in the company’s overall plans.
Over the past forty years, Doosan Enerbility has grown to become a globally recognized leader of nuclear components manufacturing, owing to its solid track record that includes delivery of main components for the successfully exported APR1400 in the UAE, as well as the supply of 34 nuclear reactors and 124 steam generators to nuclear power plants at home and abroad.