KEDO a heavy fuel oil

North Koreans demanded during 1994 negotiations with the United States that it be provided with refined oil product and light water reactors from the United States. The United States wanted to send coal and no reactors. They settled on heavy fuel oil (HFO, or “liquid coal”) simply because the DPRK had one power plant designed to use it; and on 2 gigawatts of light water reactors to be built in the DPRK. Both choices proved counter-productive for both parties although the Agreed Framework held for eight years.

HFO proved hard for the North Koreans to absorb, as only one large power plant in the country was designed to use HFO as a full-time fuel. The HFO sent to the DPRK also contained significant amounts of sulfur and other impurities that have reportedly accelerated the corrosion of heat exchangers in DPRK power plants designed to use coal, thereby reducing their generating efficiency (and capacity). Much HFO ended up in trenches because the DPRK had no way to store it or use it.

As for the reactors to be built at Kumho in North Korea, their long-delayed construction has been suspended, leaving them incomplete without generating a single kilowatt hour of electricity. Moreover, even if the reactors had been completed, the North Korean grid could not then nor could it ever have supported these two reactors, as the grid was far too small and simple to run such large and potentially hazardous units. During the negotiations of the 1994 Agreed Framework, North Korean grid experts told their leadership to not accept any reactors larger than (at most) 400 megawatts. American negotiators also knew about the grid constraint, but chose to ignore it because there were no (western) commercial reactor units available smaller than about a gigawatt (1000 megawatts), and because they believed that the North Korean grid problem was not theirs to solve.

Thus, the two parties were driven by irresistible political logic to proceed with a bad project that could never have worked on North Korea’s grid. A decade of squabbling and slow motion construction then ensued, all over a project that could not satisfy North Korea’s energy aspirations, even if it had been completed.

Source: South Korea’s Power Play at the Six-Party Talks, Nautilus institute