South Korea’s ruling Democratic Party is considering building new nuclear power plants to ensure a stable electricity supply for the government’s three flagship projects in semiconductors, data centres and physical AI, the party said on 13 July.

“Minister [of climate, energy and environment] Kim Sung-whan said he is not ruling out new nuclear power plants. The idea is not to rule out nuclear power as a way to address the intermittency of renewable energy,” said Han Jeoung-ae, the party’s policy committee chair.

Han made the comments when he was asked whether nuclear power had been discussed during a closed-door government-party meeting on economic growth strategies for the second half of the year at the National Assembly.