SEOUL, Dec. 25 (Yonhap) -- South Korea will seek to build more nuclear power plants in an effort to expand its dependence on atomic energy for its electricity needs, the commerce minister said Sunday.

   "There is no change in the government's nuclear energy policy," Minister of Knowledge Economy Hong Suk-woo said in an interview with news Y, Yonhap News Agency's all-news cable TV channel. "The government will continue to construct nuclear power plants."

   In the future, the government will move to increase the electricity generated by nuclear power plants to 40 percent of the country's power needs, said the head of the ministry in charge of the country's energy policy.

   South Korea currently has 21 active nuclear reactors, supplying about 14 percent of the country's total energy needs. The country plans to build 11 new reactors by 2030, in addition to seven other reactors already under construction.

   The government will also do its utmost to secure the safety of nuclear power plants in the wake of Japan's Fukushima plant crisis triggered by a devastating quake and subsequent tsunami in March, Hong said.

   The minister also stressed the need to determine ways of processing spent fuel as soon as possible, saying temporary repositories at the nuclear power plants will soon exceed their capacities.

   Hong's remarks came two days after the state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. (KHNP) named two possible locations for its new plants Thursday. The locations cited are Yeongdeok in North Gyeongsang Province and Samcheok in Gangwon Province. Both sites are located some 300 kilometers from the capital Seoul.

   Resource-poor South Korea has been increasingly turning to nuclear power to power its export-oriented economy, Asia's fourth-largest. The country is the world's fourth-largest importer of crude oil.

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