On May 5, 2010, the Malaysian government announced that we are to have our own nuclear power plant by 2021. References:
Our first nuke plant by 2021
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/5/5/nation/6194127&sec=nation
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/5/4/nation/20100504145101&sec=nation
First nuclear power plant expected in 2021, says Chin
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsbusiness.php?id=495465
While it cannot be denied that a developing Malaysia needs more power for industrial growth and sustainability, the questions are: “Are we ready for nuclear power?” and “Will we be able to manage nuclear power with high operational and safety standards that meets or exceeds international standards?”
1. Nuclear Energy
Nuclear energy is energy released during the splitting or fusing of the atomic nuclei. The two key characteristics of a nuclear fission are – the energy per fission is very large, for e.g. the fission of 1 kilogram of Uranium-235 releases 18.7 million kilowatt-hours as heat (a Malaysian family of three persons typically uses less than 250 kilowatt-hours per month), and secondly, the fission process initiates a self-sustaining series of nuclear fissions or chain reaction which results in a continuous release of nuclear energy.
Thus, it is very important to be able to efficiently and safely contain and regulate the nuclear fission process in order to harness the nuclear energy for use.
2. Nuclear Power Reactors
The first large-scale nuclear reactors were built in 1944 in the state of Washington, United States for the manufacture of nuclear weapons material i.e. plutonium, while the power or energy produced was not used. Today, several types or categories of nuclear power reactors exist. There are light-water and heavy-water reactors, propulsion reactors, research reactors, and breeder reactors. Malaysia’s nuclear reactor at the Malaysia Nuclear Agency facility (formerly known as MINT – Malaysian Institute of Nuclear Technology Research) is a research reactor (typically of 1-megawatt or less) used for research purposes and the production of radioactive isotopes for medical and industrial use.
A large, for e.g. a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power reactor contains billions of curies (1 Curie = a unit measure of activity of radioactive substances; named in honour of French physicists Pierre and Marie Curie) of radioactivity during operation and even after shutdown, requiring mandatory safety reactor designs and processes to manage and eliminate the radioactivity from causing harm.
In the early 1980s, more than a hundred nuclear power plants were operating or being built in the United States (USA). Since 1978, no orders for new or additional nuclear plants were made, and some completed plants have not been allowed to operate partly due to the ongoing USA and former Soviet Union (USSR) nuclear arms disarmament talks and treaties.
3. Nuclear Fuels and Wastes
Another major issue or challenge is the management of nuclear fuels and wastes. The hazardous fuels used in nuclear reactors present major management problems. The hazardous fuels must be stored or disposed off.
A typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear power reactor has about 200 fuel elements, one-third of which are replaced each year because of the depletion of the uranium-235 and the buildup of fission products. At the end of its life in the reactor, the fuel is highly radioactive because of the fission products it contains and therefore is still producing a considerable amount of energy. The discharged fuel needs to be placed in water storage pools at the reactor site for a year or more.
At the end of the cooling period the spent fuel elements needs to be shipped in heavily shielded casks either to permanent storage facilities or to a chemical reprocessing plant. At a reprocessing plant, the unused uranium and the plutonium-239 produced in the reactor will be recovered and the radioactive wastes concentrated.
By 2000, reprocessing of spent fuel was prohibited in the United States because of environmental, health, and safety concerns, not to mention that plutonium-239 can be illegally used for weapons manufacture.
The long-term storage of the highly radioactive wastes, which remain biologically hazardous for thousands of years will always be the subject of public controversy, especially in the geographic regions in which the repository is to be located or being proposed to be built to store nuclear wastes.
4a. Nuclear Safety
The two major areas of public concern about nuclear power plants are: (a) the high level of radioactivity, including storage and disposal, and (b) the use of nuclear fuels uranium-235 and plutonium-239 are the materials from which nuclear weapons are made.
High safety needs and know-how:
(i) Radioactive hazards
Radioactive materials emit penetrating, ionizing radiation that can injure and permanently damage living tissues.
(ii) Reactor safety systems
The safety of the nuclear power reactor itself has received the greatest attention. In an operating reactor, the fuel elements contain the largest fraction of the total radioactive inventory.
4b. The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl incidents
Despite the very high safety design and operating standards required to run a nuclear power plant, accidents still do occur. History records the nuclear disasters at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, United States in 1979 and at Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986.
The former was due to operational errors while the later incident was due to unauthorized testing of the reactor that caused two explosions. In the Chernobyl incident, radioactive material spread over Scandinavia and northern Europe. More than 30 people died and about 135,000 people were evacuated.
Can we guarantee Malaysians and our neighbouring countries that a nuclear accident will never occur in Malaysia when we have a nuclear power plant? Should a nuclear accident occur, what evacuation plans can be implemented within a small country like Malaysia or even within the South East Asia region? How and from whom will we secure the expertise to manage our nuclear power plant up to or exceeding international standards?
5. Other Major Issues and Challenges
Needless to say that any large-scale nuclear power project in Malaysia will not only generate major environmental, health and safety issues and concerns but also serious political and ethical issues within and without Malaysia, which is beyond the scope of this article to discuss in detail but worth highlighting.
6. Conclusion
While there are schools of thoughts supporting and rejecting the use of nuclear energy, it is without doubt that nuclear energy can be very dangerous. The future energy needs of a developing Malaysia, is indeed a challenging issue. At the end of the day, it is the ability to balance the amount of benefits against risks that will win the argument. It is very clear that if we are to have our own nuclear power plant, we certainly cannot and must not manage it like how we currently manage our public toilets … which has seen some significant improvements.
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