SEOUL, The fourth and final unit of the South Korean-built Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has started up, signaling its commercial operation, South Korea's state-run utility firm said Friday. The Unit 4 reactor began producing heat through nuclear fission, used for generating electricity, in a stable manner, with its commercial operation expected in the first half of the year, according to the Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO). It is the last of the four nuclear reactors built in Barakah, 270 kilometers west of Abu Dhabi, under a US$20 billion contract won by a KEPCO-led consortium in 2009. The project marked South Korea's first export of a homegrown commercial atomic power plant. The first Barakah unit began commercial operation in April 2021, the second one in March 2022 and the third one in Feb. 2023. The plant is the first multi-unit operational nuclear plant in the Arab region, using four APR-1400 pressurized water reactors capable of each producing up to 1,400 megaw atts of clean electricity. Source: Yonhap News Agency