IN trademark straight-talking style, Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad declared on Sept 18 that ‘Malaysia will not use nuclear power plants to generate energy, as science has yet to find ways to manage nuclear waste and the effects of radiation’.
In a keynote address to the Electric Power Supply Industry Conference in Kuala Lumpur, the prime minister cited numerous nuclear incidents worldwide that had led to people suffering from the effects of radiation.
Malaysia, he said, will continue to rely on existing fuels to generate electricity, including stable, environmentally-friendly hydroelectric dams and wind power.
Despite cost advantages and scientific advancements, a solution to nuclear power’s drawbacks has yet to be discovered.
And it is on that basis that Malaysia is rejecting its use.
Malaysia, he noted, had a “bad experience” with amang, a type of irradiated ore once used to make colour televisions.
Its activation led to radioactive residue problems and widespread community fears.
The eventual resolution was to bury the substance under thick cement in an area one square kilometre large. The prime minister said the area is still unsafe, and lost to development.
The nuclear power debate has been going on for a long time.
Among several arguments in nuclear power’s favour is production cost. Light water reactors (which generate the majority of nuclear electricity worldwide) produce power at RM1.00 to RM2.80 per kilowatt-hour, a large range reflecting the design and other requirements of each reactor, as well as government subsidies and other variables.
Another big advantage of nuclear energy: it produces no air pollution such as nitrogen oxide and sulphur dioxide, both of which contribute to acid rain, and no greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane that contribute to global warming.
Nuclear power also produces no ozone and no particulate matter in the air as air pollutants.
The reactors’ fuel source — primarily uranium — is relatively abundant in earth’s crust and not expected to run out anytime soon. There are known reserves of roughly 5.5 million tonnes of uranium that could be mined at RM520 per kilogramme.
Given the current annual rate of world consumption — about 66,500 tonnes — known reserves constitute about 80 years’ worth of fuel.
Another advantage of nuclear energy is that it can reliably run to its full potential, ideal for national power grids.
Those are all indeed powerful arguments in favour of nuclear energy. Tipping the scale against its use is radioactive nuclear waste.
This waste, which consists primarily of the fission fragments and their radioactive-decay products, must be stored for many years before radioactivity decays to a reasonable level, and the safe long-term storage of this waste is a matter of great concern and debate. A typical reactor creates about 20 cubic metres of waste annually, compared with 200,000 cubic metres of waste ash from a coal-fired plant.
Spending 10 seconds within three metres of a tonne of fresh fuel rod waste from a reactor would result in a fatal dose of radiation. Nuclear processes also produce plutonium, exposure to which can increase the risk of cancer in the liver, bone, or lungs.
These are elements associated also with weapons, and nuclear power plants are deemed ideal targets for terrorists looking to fuel catastrophic weapons or to cause a widespread radiation disaster.
One other disadvantage: the extreme capital and operating costs of plants, including the requirement for highly skilled workers to build, maintain and monitor the operations to ensure the safety and process of the plant.
This last point — our ability to ensure the safety of a nuclear plant — is very pertinent. In the past four decades, the world had witnessed major accidents at Three Mile Island (USA, 1979), Chernobyl (Soviet-Ukraine, 1986), and Fukushima (Japan, 2011).
If such catastrophes could occur in these advanced, industrialised countries, what assurance could we give ordinary Malaysians that nuclear power is a safe option to generate electricity for our country?
The good doctor is absolutely right when he implies that science still has no answer to safely manage nuclear technology.
Hopefully, that day will arrive but in the meantime, as the cliché goes, it is better to be safe than sorry.
And it’s possible that a new, safer, lower-carbon way to power our rising energy needs and development will present itself. Underway today in southern France, for example, is a multinational research and engineering nuclear fusion megaproject known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. Fusion, the nuclear reaction that powers the Sun and the stars, is a potential source of safe, non-carbon emitting and virtually limitless energy.
The plant’s designers hope to produce the equivalent of 500 megawatts of thermal output power over 20 minutes using 50 megawatts of input power — a ten-fold gain.
That reactor is now more than
half built, and the world follows its progress with interest.
Zakri Abdul Hamid is the outgoing joint-chairman of the Malaysian Industry — Government Group on High Technology (MIGHT) and former board member of UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development in New Delhi