Nuclear power turns off South Koreans after Fukushima

For Seoul residents, South Korea's decision to keep four nuclear reactors offline because of faked safety reports means power shortages and a summer of sweltering homes and offices. Lee Jin-gon has bigger concerns.

"We feel unsafe day and night," Lee said, pointing at the cause of his nervousness, one of the closed reactors in the town of Yangnam, a four-hour journey southeast of the capital. "We became worried about nuclear safety after the Fukushima accident. Now it's worse," he said, adding that locals have held protests to close the whole plant.

Lee, 60, is emblematic of growing opposition to atomic power in South Korea, a movement galvanized by the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima power plant in Japan in 2011. It gained more support when an investigation found nuclear plants were using components with faked safety certificates. That cost Kim Kyun-seop his job as head of state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Company, which runs the 23 operating reactors.

The anti-nuclear lobby is forcing President Park Geun-hye to take note. Her administration said it would review the role of nuclear power to reflect "social acceptability" in its energy plan due by the end of this year. The government had planned to build more reactors to cope with electricity demand it forecast to surge almost 60 per cent by the year 2027.

Surveys show nuclear power is becoming increasingly socially unacceptable. Sixty-three percent of respondents to a March survey by pollster Hangil Research said they consider domestic reactors unsafe. That compared with 54 per cent in a poll conducted a year earlier by the non-profit Korean Federation for Environmental Movement.

In Yangnam, Lee, head of the local branch of Nonghyup, the nationwide co-operative federation of farmers, says safety concerns about nuclear power are damaging sales of the area's rice and other farm produce.