South Korean Gas Engineers Seminar Spotlights CCUS Safety and 28-Plant Coal Phaseout

According to E2NEWS, the Chungcheong branch of the Korea Gas Engineers Society convened its seventh annual safety-technology seminar on 12 June at a facility in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, drawing around 20 members. Billed this year as a carbon-neutrality specialisation event, the session featured four presentations covering greenhouse-gas policy, flexible-dispatch risks at gas-fired plants, and AI-based monitoring systems.

A division head at the Korea Institute of Energy Researchargued that hydrogen, renewables, and CCUS are indispensable to South Korea’s carbon-neutrality and energy-security goals, and that as demonstration projects scale toward commercialisation, rigorous gas safety management becomes a prerequisite for success. A representative fromoutlined the national policy to retire 28 coal-fired power plants sequentially by 2036 and replace them with combined-cycle gas facilities, cautioning that the transition demands strict safety oversight — from welding gases used during construction through to natural gas, hydrogen, and ammonia in ongoing operations. A certified gas engineer at Korea Midland Powerpresented a risk framework for ammonia and hydrogen equipment operating under flexible-dispatch conditions, noting that frequent start-stop cycling accelerates equipment fatigue while existing protection regimes remain anchored to statutory minimums; he proposed upgraded hazard assessments, reinforced detection and suppression systems, and emergency “action cards” for faster on-site response.

In closing remarks, the society’s national presidentcharacterised the seminar as significant for introducing safety and emerging technologies across multiple fields, and called for a stronger statutory mandate for certified gas engineers in design, engineering, operations, and maintenance as CCS&U, hydrogen, and ammonia co-firing and full-combustion power technologies advance.