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  • NFD Korea Starts Work on 300MW AI Data Campus in Dangjin

    NFD Korea Starts Work on 300MW AI Data Campus in Dangjin

    NFD Korea has started development on a 300-megawatt artificial intelligence data center campus in Dangjin, roughly 90 kilometers southwest of Seoul.

    Building permits for an initial 200-megawatt phase came through in September 2026. General contractor DL E&C broke ground in early November.

    A second agreement signed on September 9 with Chungcheongnam-do Province, Dangjin City, and EFD Co. Added a 100-megawatt parcel (Building C) valued at 1.24 trillion won ($920 million). Permitting for that final block wraps up in December 2026. The completed 300-megawatt facility will use liquid cooling engineered for rack densities up to 160 kilowatts to handle AI model training and inference workloads.

    Securing power outside the capital

    Grid bottlenecks in greater Seoul have pushed data center developers into industrial belts further south. Securing high-voltage power allocations near the capital now takes years. Operators also face regulatory delays and local residential pushback.

    Placing the campus inside the Songsan 2 General Industrial Complex avoids urban zoning disputes and secures grid access. Korea Electric Power Corporation has committed a full 300-megawatt supply. LS Electric will deliver step-up transformers in stages across 2027 and 2028.

    Between low community-opposition risk inside the industrial complex, proximity to the Seoul metro, and strong local government backing, Dangjin is positioned to deliver AI data center capacity quickly.

    The race for high-density capacity

    High-density space remains scarce for cloud providers and hyperscalers entering South Korea. Standard enterprise facilities cannot handle the heat generated by modern graphics processing units. Most of these processors require dedicated liquid cooling.

    Institutional real estate investors across Asia are shifting capital away from speculative logistics and into purpose-built computing hubs backed by long-term leases. NFD Korea is currently negotiating terms with international cloud service providers and AI firms to anchor the Dangjin site before commercial rollout.

    Building out a national pipeline

    Dangjin’s buildout follows an initial memorandum of understanding signed in 2023 for the first 200 megawatts across Buildings A and B. Founder and chief executive Choi Jae-woo, a former infrastructure lead at Amazon Web Services and Brookfield-backed DCI Data Centers, launched NFD Korea to develop a gigawatt-scale pipeline across the country.

    In Yongin City, the developer broke ground on an 80-megawatt hyperscale facility in September 2025. That site will also go live in 2028.

    Commercial service for Dangjin’s Phase 1, consisting of Building A, begins in the first quarter of 2028. Phases 2 and 3 are scheduled to come online before the end of that year.

  • Petrovietnam and KEPCO Speed up Talks on Ninh Thuan 2 Nuclear Project

    Petrovietnam and KEPCO Speed up Talks on Ninh Thuan 2 Nuclear Project

    Petrovietnam and South Korea’s Korea Electric Power Corp have accelerated negotiations to construct Vietnam’s Ninh Thuan 2 nuclear plant. Workers have already cleared 97.5 per cent of the site land.

    Chief Executive Le Manh Cuong met KEPCO President Kim Dong-cheol in Seoul on Tuesday. They met to advance technology, investment, and project financing frameworks for the commercial nuclear facility.

    Land Clearances and Financing Talks

    Hanoi assigned Petrovietnam to lead development of the Ninh Thuan 2 station to revive nuclear power generation. In July, the Ministry of Industry and Trade confirmed KEPCO as the primary foreign partner candidate following preliminary discussions with Vietnamese authorities.

    Site preparation in Ninh Thuan province is almost complete. Petrovietnam confirmed that remaining clearance operations will finish shortly. That clears a key requirement before commercial construction agreements can proceed.

    South Korean Reactor Push in Southeast Asia

    KEPCO presented its delivery of the Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates as an operational blueprint for Vietnam. The four-reactor Barakah complex represents Seoul’s main export reference. It gives KEPCO an edge in discussions over procurement models and long-term project debt financing.

    Choosing KEPCO creates a deliberate split in Vietnam’s nuclear procurement program. Hanoi previously designated Russia’s state atomic agency Rosatom to develop the separate Ninh Thuan 1 project. The strategy distributes technological reliance across competing nuclear suppliers rather than committing to a single foreign vendor.

    Power Demand and Grid Readiness

    Vietnam shelved nuclear power planning in 2016 because of cost constraints and fiscal discipline. Rising baseload electricity demand from industrial clusters has forced trade officials to bring atomic power back into the long-term national power development master plan.

    Factories and industrial operators in Vietnam face ongoing grid capacity constraints as export manufacturing expands. High-capacity nuclear baseload addresses supply reliability. However, commercial terms and safety licensing still require bilateral government approvals.

    Next, Hanoi and Seoul will run financial structuring reviews while Petrovietnam finishes the final 2.5 per cent of site clearance work.