KEPCO NF (KNF) is the only nuclear fuel design and production company in Korea. KNF was founded by the government to localize nuclear fuels and develop nuclear fuel cycle technology. "Our company began to produce nuclear fuels in 1989," said Kim Ki-hak, President & CEO of KNF. "Since then, we have produced and stably supplied nuclear fuels to all nuclear power stations. We are in the middle of developing new nuclear fuels with our original technology after succeeding in localizing nuclear fuel design and production technology."
At present, Korea put out about 36% of all its electric power at nuclear power plants. Our company supplies all nuclear fuels which all 21 nuclear reactors (17 light water reactors and 4 heavy water reactors) in Korea consume. In order to make nuclear fuels in reactors produce electricity safely and economically, KNF is carrying out tasks related not only to the design and safety of nuclear reactor cores but also to the development of next-generation high-performance original nuclear fuels. So KNF is not a simple nuclear fuel producer but an R&D-oriented hi-tech company.
KNF is a basic industrial company but a basic industrial company with 93.1 billion won (US$82.0 million) in capital. Last year, the company posted 183 billion won (US$161.2 million) in sales and 43 billion won (US$37.9 million) in net income. At the end of 2009, the UAE placed an order for Korea to build a nuclear power plant.
"If Korea continues after the export to the UAE, KNF's sales will expand geometrically as nuclear fuel costs are about 10% of the total amount of a nuclear power plant export contract," Kim continued. "Once built, nuclear power plants need nuclear fuel for at least 60 years. It is not easy to change the type of nuclear fuel during this period. So once Korea exports a nuclear power plant, Korea is able to steadily generate profits. Therefore, our nuclear fuel business has indefinite growth potential."
With a view to expanding our production capacity to deal with future demand such as expansion of nuclear power plants in Korea, KNF is expanding nuclear fuel production facilities and building a nuclear fuel cladding tube production plant to complete its construction in 2015.
"Moreover, we have been making a Control Element Assembly (CEA) for U.S. CE-type nuclear power plants and Korean standard-type nuclear power plants through KWN, a joint venture between KNF and Westinghouse of the U.S. since March," Kim added. "At the same time, we are relentlessly pushing for a project to supply nuclear fuels to the nuclear plants to be built in the UAE in accordance with the schedule."
Furthermore, KNF began to export 50,000 units of metal nuclear fuel cladding tube for light water reactors to Westinghouse in the first half of this year and is putting spurs to exporting key parts of nuclear fuels and nuclear fuel production equipment. "Our cladding export to the U.S., the country from which nuclear power station technology originated, is quite meaningful in that the excellence and quality of our technology is globally recognized," Kim emphasized.
The Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Incident in March is quite a pitiable case and strongly warned the world about the importance of nuclear safety. With an eye towards securing nuclear safety, KNF is putting its utmost efforts into guaranteeing high qualities of nuclear fuels by establishing a quality management system for a long time. Last year, the company was honored to be selected by the Korean government as a company with strong quality competitiveness for ten years running. "For the purpose of further advancing the system, we built the KNF Innovative Production System (KIPS) and are operating the KIPS on a full scale this year," Kim said.
KNF is sparing no efforts in guaranteeing qualities of its nuclear fuels in the entire process from product design to product deliveries to nuclear power plants on the basis of a thorough quality assurance program by satisfying Korean nuclear power laws and regulations, requirements of ISO 9001:2008, IEPIC-QAP, ASMEAQN-1 and quality assurance requirements of customers. "In addition, our company achieves high quality of nuclear fuels and meets requirements of customers by securing a large number of specialized human resources with rich experiences in various sectors such as nuclear fuel design and engineering, R&D, production and quality checks," Kim explained.
Since 2006 and 2008, respectively, KNF has been supplying world-class nuclear fuels to Korean standard nuclear power plants and Westinghouse nuclear power plants by developing them. "But our exports of these two nuclear fuels hedged round with some restrictions as we do not own some basic technologies," Kim said. "Accordingly we began to develop High Performance with Efficiency and Reliability (HIPER), an original nuclear fuel that Korea can export on its own, reactor core design codes, and safety analysis codes in 2005. We finished the development of a test assembly at the beginning of this year and are testing its performances in a nuclear reactor."
When the final stage of the development is finished, the company will be able to tap into the world market actively and positively by securing independent basic technologies without any export restrictions. This new fuel is a world-class fuel with an increase of about 20% in combustion performance and big improvements to thermal properties, earthquake resistance, reliability, and quality, compared to other existing fuels. In March, eight bundles of test assemblies were tentatively loaded in a nuclear power plant. "We will prove combustion performance of the bundles for commercialization and began to supply them in 2016," Kim added.
Compared to the past, people's awareness of state-owned companies has changed a good deal. It is natural for them to change their awareness with a change in time. In the past, government-run companies tended to remain domestic companies as they were focused on the public goods. Accordingly, as they paid attention to the domestic market, they did not think that their competitors were abroad. But now, government-run Korean companies are making a foray into the global market and competing with foreign companies.
"Now, not only private companies but also state-owned companies should have global competitiveness," Kim said. "I think that if a government-run company pushes for public interest at home and securing competitiveness and profitability abroad, the company can contribute to the nation more."
As Korea succeeded in exporting nuclear power plant technology to the UAE in December 2009, the number of nations able to export such technology increased to six nations from five nations - the U.S., France, Canada, Russia, and Japan. At the moment, the world nuclear fuel market is dominated by Westinghouse of the U.S. and AREVA of France, followed by KNF.
Kim did not forget to mention the vision of KNF. "Our company has set Global Top 3 Fuel Cycle Company as its long-term vision," Kim said. "This means we take aim not at the third place but at the first place ultimately. To this end, we should secure a world-class production capability and upgrade our technological level among others. Although securing global human resources is an important task, we can achieve our goal through smooth communication and an amicable labor-management relationship."
