An Introduction of New Construction Paradigm for the Nuclear Power Plants in Korea

From the beginning of the new millennium, the possession of nuclear competitiveness has become the pinnacle of all interests. Accordingly, researches for shortening the construction period of such facilities have been progressing very actively. Since 2001, Workshops have been held once a year to have discussions on the way to reduce construction time of nuclear power plants and to develop new technologies in construction of power plants participated with utility, A/E, manufacturer, and major construction company. The SC structure, which was proposed by The Korea Next Generation Reactor project as a next construction paradigm of nuclear power plants, has been reviewed for its validity in 2001 and has been evaluated as a composite structure that can be labelled as the breakthrough for the limitations of conventional reinforced concrete structures (KHNP,2002). Currently, studies to apply the SC structure into nuclear power plants are being performed under the 1st year Research and Development on structure/composite module project (phase I) by an organic collaboration formed with utility, A/E, regulation agency, institute, and research labs. In this paper, the current status of the technology development in the structure/composite module and its future prospect are introduced.