Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) said on 10 August that completion of unit 4 of the Shin Kori NPP had been delayed by ten months until September 2018. Completion was originally scheduled for November. KHNP said the delay was decided in March to take account of design improvements resulting from commissioning work carried out so far. Additional seismic assessment work is also to be carried out in response to the Gyeongju earthquake in September last year. Shin Kori 3 and 4, South Korea’s first APR1400 reactors, were authorised in 2006, and the construction licence was issued in April 2008.
First concrete was poured at unit 3 in October 2008 and at unit 4 in August 2009. Unit 3 was originally scheduled to begin commercial operation at the end of 2013, and unit 4 in September 2014. However, their operation was delayed by the need to test safety-related control cabling and its subsequent replacement.
Unit 3 achieved first criticality in December 2015, was connected to the grid in January 2016 and began commercial operation in December. Cold hydrostatic testing was completed at unit 4 in November 2015 and hot functional testing in April 2016. The company now expects to load fuel into unit 4 in January.
Two more 1,350MWe APR1400 reactors under construction at units 1 and 2 of the Shin Hanul site in South Korea are expected to begin service in April 2018 and February 2019, respectively. Plans for two further APR-1400 units planned for the Shin Kori and Shin Hanul sites have been suspended pending a decision by the new government on the construction of new reactors.
