OMG Malaysia building nuclear power plant? [Update]

Usually when you hear the word nuclear power, only a few things come to mind. Nuclear bomb, cancer, mutant, nothing good la basically. We grew up learning in sejarah or whatever subject that Japan kena bomb during World War 2 and it was so powerful that Japan surrendered, or about the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in 1986 that until now no one can stay.

So….what if we told you that Malaysia is planning to venture into the area of nuclear energy? Recently, the Consumer Association of Penang stated that the government still intends to build a nuclear power plant despite public disapproval.

The idea of introducing nuclear energy in Malaysia actually goes back a few years. The news of nuclear power plants in Malaysia first surfaced in 2010 when it was announced that Malaysia intended to have it’s first functional nuclear power plant by the year 2021. This was met with swift objection by The Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP) and Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) who released an elaborate statement to object the project.

Since then, a combination of factors have contributed to the proposed project being delayed. The first one being the Fukushima nuclear disaster which was caused by the 2011 Japan earthquake and the second one being the protests behind the opening of the Lynas rare earth plant.

Nuclear thing all can make electricity meh? I thought it’s like weapon.

Nuclear reactions can be used as a weapon but a nuclear power plant basically uses nuclear reactions to generate energy to heat up water. This then creates steam which turns turbines to generate electricity. To properly explain this process would make us a science website instead of a news one so we’re just gonna put a video here for ugaiz.

So yes, while there are similarities in terms of the material used, it’s main purpose is to generate electricity instead of you know…kill people.

Can a nuclear power plant explode and become nuclear bomb?

When you hear about nuclear power plant sure you will wonder if got accident will it explode and become nuclear bomb? And after hearing about Chernobyl and Fukushima that’s really the first thing that comes to mind isn’t it, whether got mushroom cloud or not?

Well what we read was that nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs have different amounts of the nuclear…err…stuff in them.

Nuclear power plants use an element known as uranium, specifically uranium 235. Natural uranium has not enough uranium 235 for the boom-boom-pow stuff to happen. What do they use then? Well natural uranium is subjected to a process known as enrichment which turns natural uranium into enriched uranium. A nuclear bomb? Wayyy higher amount of uranium 235.

But what about a nuclear bomb? Significantly higher. According to this article (yah same as previous link), more than 90 percent uranium 235. When it starts reacting, the boom-boom-pow of a nuclear bomb is wayyyyy bigger than that of a nuclear power plant.

If cannot explode then why is a nuclear power plant dangerous?

The term that is commonly used to describe nuclear power plant accidents is nuclear meltdown. Even though the first thing that comes to mind when we hear nuclear meltdown is some sort of explosion, it isn’t. Thought there may be boom boom pows here and there, a nuclear meltdown is not a nuclear explosion.

Have you ever wondered why you hear about Chernobyl being unsafe for people but nothing about Hiroshima or Nagasaki? That Chernobyl will probably be uninhabitable for the next 180-320 years but Hiroshima and Nagasaki have already been rebuilt long ago?

There are elaborate explanations for these that you can read about here but basically the difference is a nuclear explosion is a bomb, a nuclear meltdown is more like an overflow of a very terrible poisoning. A nuclear explosion is just a one time thing while the meltdown spans over a long period of time.

Nuclear power plant dangerous la right? Why gomen wan to make?

If nuclear energy really is as bad as we think it is, why was the idea even suggested in the first place? Why would Malaysia, a country with many energy alternatives (petroleum, natural gas, hydroelectricity) even consider something, that if mismanaged, could cripple a whole city? And if it is necessary, why are people protesting against it?

When the nuclear project was first announced in 2010, the reasons given for it was to firstly reduce our reliance on coal and gas and secondly due to the rising costs of energy. So let us look at these two aspects of nuclear energy in a bit more detail.

1. Reliance on coal and gas

In terms of waste, nuclear energy is considered clean because it doesn’t produce greenhouse gasses (that thing that causes global warming). At the moment, Malaysia gets 90 percent of its energy from thermal power plants which runs on fuel such as coal, petrol and natural gas (fuel is burned to boil water into steam that turns turbines).

And this journal entry mentions that our energy generation contributes to more than half of the greenhouse gas emission in Malaysia (which isn’t a very small number either at 180 million tons in 2012). So our reliance on them is actually contributing to Malaysia getting hotter and hotter.

Nuclear power plants on the other hand, produces 15 to 30 times less greenhouse gas than fuel generated power plants (the numbers vary from different reports so do correct on us this if we’re wrong). And thus it would make sense to reduce our reliance on coal and gas and move to nuclear power.

But ah……….nuclear power in the end also got create waste la, nuclear waste.

Nuclear waste is a very deadly by-product of nuclear power that takes thousands of years before it is safe enough to be approached by any living creature. And the argument against nuclear energy is that is there any place in Malaysia, let alone the planet, safe enough to keep all our nuclear waste for thousands of years?

Anyway, it’s a topic that is widely debated. What we’re gonna do is leave you a few more links if you wanna read more here, here and here.

But all is not lost really, articles like this and this talk about how strides are being made on molten salt reactors which generate energy on nuclear waste! The only problem is, it’s not ready, and it would still cost a bomb (or a few nuclear bombs) to make, which brings us to our next point.

2. ECONOMICS

Again this is an issue that is very widely debated. On on end, claims are that it is expensive now because it’s still cheap to produce energy via thermal nuclear energy. But as fossil fuel becomes more scarce and with plans to introduce tax to reduce greenhouse gas emission, that could very easily change.

Nuclear power appears economically uncompetitive primarily because the price of “cheaper” fossil fuels, mainly coal, don’t reflect the high cost that carbon emissions pose for the environment. Add those costs, and suddenly, nuclear power will look like a bargain. – Wall Street Journal

And on the other hand, there are arguments that the claims of nuclear power eventually becoming cheaper has been around for the past 50 years. This article mentions that even after nuclear reforms in America in 2005, it is still more expensive than other energy sources. Thermal energy such as coal and gas are still much cheaper to build and handle as compared to a nuclear power plant.

The fifty year failure of nuclear power to be economically competitive compels nuclear advocates to label every pro-consumer analysis as anti-nuclear. The anti-nuclear label is used to avoid the inconvenient truth about nuclear: it is and has been unable to compete economically with the alternatives available. – Forbes

And honestly, seeing how our national debt is at RM623 billion (and counting, the amount is half our GDP btw) we really have to consider if nuclear energy is something we would be able to afford.

But why are we considering it then? Well one of the arguments is that while nuclear power plants are extremely expensive, they cost less in the long term.

Evaluating the two types of power over 60 years — the lifetime of a new nuclear plant — rather than the 30 years of a natural gas plant, Bryan notes that nuclear beats gas hands down as a stable investment because the long term cost of gas fuel is higher than the long term cost of nuclear fuel. – Smartplanet.com

So if that is the case, with proper finance management, maybe we would be financially stable to build one in a few years?

[Update] But…is Malaysia ready to handle its own nuclear power plants?

We decided to add this point in after a reader mentioned it in the comments (thanks n305er!). Also another very debated topic about nuclear energy. Is a nuclear power plant safe seeing as to how there have been two very popular cases of meltdown already? Can we guarantee that if anything were to go wrong with the plant would we be able to contain it?

Well first and foremost, let’s just put this out here. The Chernobyl reactor experienced a meltdown due to a design flaw and inexperienced personnel, which is something to learn from. The control rods of the reactor had a peculiar design and its personnel were not prepared to handle the situation when things started to escalate.

That being said, the Wall Street Journal mentions that the new generation of nuclear power plants are now a whole lot safer as compared to the ones that were built back then. New features have been designed to better prevent accidents should the equipment fail. And we believe this because, aside from the Fukushima accident, this Wikipedia list shows that there has been no other nuclear meltdown since Chernobyl.

The only thing we cannot account for is that accidents can happen that are beyond our control. The Fukushima accident is a good example of this because of the massive earthquake and tsunami. Thankfully tho, Malaysia is one of the safest places in the world from natural disasters, although of course from the floods we know no one is really immune la 🙁 We have to consider that while we can be careful, we can never completely control the factors that can cause a nuclear meltdown.

Basically, despite many arguments pointing in the direction of nuclear energy, maybe we’re just afraid that the nuclear power plants will not be maintained. And that is a valid concern for us Malaysians (seeing as to how a drain could end up so dirty when it’s just beside the Department of Environment of Negeri Sembilan).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzJbz0e1SkU

Well would you be surprised if we told you that we do have an already functional nuclear power generator? Yeap. It’s known as the Reaktor TRIGA PUSPATI (RTP) but instead of it being an actual power plant that generates energy for people, it’s more of a research reactor (we actually talked a bit about it here). Yes it isn’t a real power reactor but the point is we’ve been able to sustain one and so far no one has been radioactivated. Pretty impressive since it’s been in use since the 1982.

With that being said, would we be able to maintain a nuclear reactor? This blogger doesn’t seem to think so.

“No matter how much they reassure us, I just don’t think Malaysia has got what it takes to properly manage a nuclear reactor. We, as Malaysians should really think seriously about this and voice out our concerns. We can afford to have water leaking from the roof but not radiation leaking from the nuclear reactor. Worse, when leakages happen, we just sweep everything under the carpet and declare everything is safe.” – Blogger, Zewt

Can we just use other energy sources instead? Stuff that won’t kill us eventually?

Well there is always renewable energy but that too has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. But at this stage it’s really hard to prevent us from moving in the direction of nuclear energy if Malaysia intends to move away from fossil fuels and save the world from becoming a ball of…..hot.

Unless of course, there’s some really big technological breakthrough for renewable energy.

But at the end of the day, it’s really up to us Malaysians to consider the pros and cons involved and make a stand about the issue. In the meantime why not let us know what you think in this poll or in the comments below?