Nuclear Power’s Longer Game Begins After Shutdown: The Next Market in Decommissioning and Waste Management

When people talk about the nuclear power industry, they usually focus only on the construction phase. But a nuclear plant is not an asset that simply generates electricity and is done. The period after shutdown is even longer. Kori Unit 1 has been moving toward Korea’s first commercial nuclear decommissioning project since its permanent shutdown in 2017, spent nuclear fuel pools are facing growing saturation pressure, and a high-level radioactive waste repository still does not even have a site selected. The real cleanup of nuclear power starts now, and Korea is standing at that threshold.

That is why the key term to watch now is the back-end nuclear fuel cycle. It is a market that includes decommissioning, decontamination, radiation management, spent nuclear fuel storage, radioactive waste disposal, safety analysis, and engineering. But this is not a story for pure excitement. Commercial decommissioning in Korea is still at the licensing review stage, and a high-level radioactive waste repository has failed for decades to break through the wall of politics. Expectations are high, but for many companies, revenue is still a future story. Leaving out that reality means failing to see the industry as it really is.

Decommissioning, Maintenance, and Decontamination — Dismantling Nuclear Plants Safely (4 companies)

Decommissioning is not demolition by explosion; it is engineering. What gets removed first, how far contamination has spread, and under what standards regulatory clearance can be obtained—all of it requires design and maintenance, decontamination, and radiation control to work together with precision. The essence of Korea’s decommissioning market is not teardown, but a highly procedural precision industry.

The companies that stand out in this segment each have slightly different profiles. KEPCO KPS, as a public power maintenance company, has decontamination and decommissioning execution technology built on its nuclear maintenance base, though it has yet to build a track record in commercial decommissioning. Orbitech is shaping up as a new entrant to the decommissioning market, leveraging its capabilities in in-service inspection (ISI), radiation management, and regulatory clearance. Woojin Entec, part of the Woojin group, has handled maintenance for non-safety-grade nuclear instrumentation and control equipment, and went public in 2024 amid expectations that it could benefit from decommissioning demand. KEPCO E&C has a clearly defined position as Korea’s sole domestic player in nuclear decommissioning design and safety assessment (PSR), but actual decommissioning work still needs to be viewed in the context of consortium-based joint execution. Rather than asking who the main character is, the better question is who speaks the language of which process.

Company	Core strength
KEPCO KPS	Nuclear maintenance-based decontamination and decommissioning execution technology — public power maintenance company (still pre-commercial decommissioning track record)
Orbitech	Nuclear in-service inspection (ISI), radiation management, and regulatory clearance — new entrant to the decommissioning market
Woojin Entec	Maintenance of nuclear instrumentation and control equipment (non-safety-grade) — part of the Woojin group, with expected decommissioning upside (listed in 2024)
KEPCO E&C	Nuclear decommissioning design and safety assessment (PSR) — domestic monopoly in design (though decommissioning itself is carried out jointly through consortia)

Spent Nuclear Fuel, Radioactive Waste, and Engineering — Disposing of What Remains (3 companies)

Once a nuclear plant stops running, the harder question is what to do with what’s left behind. Spent nuclear fuel has to be stored, radioactive waste has to be disposed of, and the entire process has to be backed by analysis and verification. The bottleneck in the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle shows up even more clearly in storage and disposal than in decommissioning.

Doosan Enerbility has won an order for the integrated design of a dry storage cask for spent nuclear fuel, and it also has a track record of exporting casks to the TMI plant in the U.S. Mirae & Challenge is an unlisted company spanning nuclear safety analysis software, engineering, decommissioning, and safety assessment. Korea Radioactive Waste Agency, an unlisted public enterprise, is the only operator in Korea of the Gyeongju low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste disposal facility, effectively carrying the country’s radioactive waste disposal system on its own for now. Put differently, the biggest gap of all—the absence of a high-level radioactive waste repository—still has not been filled. More casks and more sophisticated analysis can help, but if the politics of final disposal remain stalled, the market can only ever be half-built.

Company	Core focus
Doosan Enerbility	Integrated design order for spent nuclear fuel dry storage casks — track record of exporting casks to the TMI plant in the U.S.
Mirae & Challenge	Nuclear safety analysis software and engineering (decommissioning and safety assessment) — unlisted
Korea Radioactive Waste Agency	Radioactive waste disposal — Korea’s only operator of the Gyeongju low- and intermediate-level disposal facility (unlisted public enterprise)

What to Watch Going Forward

Even so, the field is still wide open. Aging nuclear plants are increasing around the world, and decommissioning is being discussed as a massive new market worth tens of trillions of won. Korean companies have opportunities here as well. Maintenance-based construction, radiation management, decommissioning design, safety analysis, casks, and radioactive waste operations experience can each become the language of overseas projects. And if SMRs expand from here, the back-end nuclear fuel cycle will follow with them. For companies that have spent years running hard while focused only on the construction market, decommissioning and waste are highly likely to become the next line item on the books.

But we also need to stay clear-eyed. Domestic commercial decommissioning has not yet begun, and Kori Unit 1 is still in the process of clearing the final licensing hurdle. Korea does not even have a site for a high-level radioactive waste repository yet. A significant number of the companies mentioned in this article are also involved in nuclear plant construction, and current valuations in the back-end business already reflect a fair amount of expectation. This market will clearly grow, but in Korea it comes with both opening-day optimism and delay risk at the same time. That is exactly why it deserves attention now. Nuclear power is an industry that builds plants, but it is also, inevitably, an industry that must one day dismantle them.

※ This article organizes company names, core businesses, and market positions based on publicly available materials verified online, and some assessments reflect the author’s own views. It is not intended as a direct basis for investment decisions.

Written: July 2026. EAlexandro