Last week, Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Kim Jung-kwan traveled to the United States intending to wrap up negotiations on Korean investment there. The two countries are discussing a project to build eight nuclear reactors in the U.S. worth $120 billion (about 161 trillion won), and a tentative agreement has reportedly been reached to build at least two of them using Korea's APR1400 design. The investment talks appear to have lagged behind Japan's precisely because Korea pushed to secure construction of the APR1400. If that is the case, the government deserves praise for its effort and persistence.
Washington asked for Korean investment and participation in nuclear construction and infrastructure rebuilding, seeking to supply stable power quickly to artificial intelligence industries such as data centers. The difficulty was that three parties — the Korean government, the U.S. government and the American nuclear company Westinghouse — were each pursuing different goals. The U.S. government wanted to move the project forward quickly to meet the AI industry's power demand. Westinghouse wants every large reactor planned by the Donald Trump administration built using its own AP1000 design and opposes the APR1400's entry into the U.S. market. The Korean government would have preferred to build Korean reactors in the U.S. rather than the AP1000, whose commercial viability is uncertain because of high construction costs. In these circumstances, Seoul persuaded Washington and won a major victory in securing the chance to build Korean reactors.
The entry of Korean reactors into the U.S. is significant in several ways. First, it is a monumental achievement: 68 years after Korea first enacted its Atomic Energy Act in 1958, the country is entering the market of the nation that originally owned the technology. This can be seen as the result of government policy support combined with the efforts of the nuclear industry across the entire process, from importing reactors to developing and exporting them. Second, it offers a first step toward resolving the intellectual property restrictions agreed with Westinghouse last year, which limited exports to advanced markets including the U.S. and Europe. If the two countries use this cooperation to build a mutually beneficial nuclear business model, it could become an opening for a resolution that serves both sides' interests. Third, Korea has seized a prime opportunity for its nuclear industry to grow substantially. The Trump administration aims to expand nuclear capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050. If Korea demonstrates its competitiveness in this project, an even larger market will open up.
For Korean reactors to succeed in the U.S., much change and innovation is required at home. To lead the global nuclear business, Korea needs to modernize its nuclear industry structure, and in particular should consider shifting to a system suited to exports. It must also reorganize its existing supply chain to fit overseas projects and improve the rigid procurement rules of state-owned enterprises. Measures are needed as well to strengthen workforce capacity, which shrank under the nuclear phase-out policy and has been weakened by the mass retirement of the baby boom generation. Training new personnel early and systematically deploying experienced staff would also be useful approaches.
If such change and innovation allows Korea to deliver its strength — building on time and on budget — in the U.S. market, it will supply stable power to the U.S. at reasonable cost. The Korean government would also recover its invested funds reliably, and Korean companies would expand further into the U.S. and other global nuclear markets. It would stand as a symbol of an economic alliance between the two countries that delivers three gains at once.
