(I'm not having a lot free time for now actually, so pardon my topic for the lack of facts/statistics)

I'm sure nuclear energy is no longer a new issue/topic.
Its power generation output is high enough to contribute towards the power grid of a country, making it as reliable as the conventional power generation methods.
Besides, the yield/input ratio is pretty high, i.e. a relatively small amount of fuel (herein uranium) required to generate a substantial amount of power.

That, I'm sure most of us know. Another pros about nuclear energy is that in contrast with other alternative energies, nuclear generation's output is more predictable/controllable. Hence, it has not much issue when being connected to the power grid. Wind and wave energy, are still being used for small scale because their output is not constant and can't be predicted. Hence, making it not reliable when it comes to analysing for power supply to meet the base load demand of the country/state.

Cons, includes the difficulty in handling the toxic waste. The fuel waste after the power generation process, remains radioactive for a very long time (for a thousand years, well that's what I've read).

Others include fear of the plant being unstable and hence explode. This is rather untrue, because the nuclear fission process is very much safe and has a number of check-and-balance system for safety purposes (I remembered clearly there are steps to ensure the stability of the fission reactions. Something about the Boron rods.... akh I'd do some search ups when I'm free.)
However, public opinion remains it is dangerous, perhaps from them thinking nuclear power plants are just another form of nuclear bomb.
Also, the Chernobyl incident have gave the wrong impression that nuclear power plant does have the risk of blowing up.


So all being said, I'd hope the topic has a sense of direction in terms of:
1) The power generation by nuclear fission. Pardon but I've always think scientific discussions always work better with numbers.

2) Should countries begin to adopt nuclear energy? (For scoping purposes, let's focus on Malaysia first.)
If yes why so, and if not, why not? XD


This is the first time I've created a topic here, so pardon me if it's lacking anything >< (I know! The numbers are missing!)
I hope there will be a fruitful discussion, in contrast to those topics we've been having for a while now

several years back there was this nuclear powered cell phone, that apparently juices up the phone for a year of usage at minimum without charging.

but nuclear energy has remained largely unpopular. for reasons that fossil fuel is what generates income and upholds the economy.

if they are able to extract energy for household use, chances are toyota and honda are going to apply such concept to their cars. and the black gold dependent economy isnt ready for that.

1) yes... take E=MC^2 for one gramme of matter to fission, that would be 0.001kg x (3.0 x 10^8)^2=3.0 x 10^13Joule
think of that energy... compare that with rate.. how much energy can be produced by 1 kg of coal, gas, petrol?

2) in the world, france is the country utilize nuclear energy.. infact it also exprt its nuclear energy... Malaysia?? technology, knowledge and funding would be the main concern I think...

p/s I still remember one thing my professor said in UK.. "yeah... though nuclear also create hard (very very hard) to degrade waste, and need millenia to degrade biologically, well, its not our concern.. that`ll be our future generation`s concern ":x

I am a proponent of power generation through non-fossil fuel methods, but I feel that nuclear power generation is not the best long term solution for most nations including but not limited to Malaysia.

The problems, some of which you've highlighted, basically circles around:
- Safe disposal of waste
- Power plant safety
- Availability of nuclear materials
- Security of nuclear materials

Let's look at these problems individually.

Safe Disposal of Waste
This is basically the first thing that comes into most people's minds when we talk about nuclear energy. The problem is that nuclear materials are radioactive and they remain dangerously radioactive for thousands to tens of thousands of years. However, the amount of energy it outputs to produce sufficient electrical power reduces after a number of years. So this makes disposal of the still highly radioactive material crucial to any plans for nuclear power generation.

Another form of waste that most people don't consider because of its relative obscurity is hot water. Nuclear plants work by converting water from rivers or the ocean to steam which then powers conventional steam turbines that generate the electricity that we all use. Water is also used in nuclear power plants to cool down the reactors and other components that generate too much heat. So all the hot water is actually waste from the power plant.

Now that we've established what the wastes are, lets see what the current means of disposal are.

For hot water, the disposal is quite simple. It's dumped back into rivers or the ocean, but this has caused major changes in biodiversity in places where the water is dumped. Hot water is also less dense in diluted oxygen, so when dumped into the river or sea, it displaces the more oxygen rich water from the area, causing a region of oxygen depletion. Yes, you can cool the water down and then dispose it, but that will reduce the overall efficiency of the power plant and cost more money. Will you be willing as a plant operator to spend lots of money cooling down water just to dump it into the sea again?

As for the radioactive waste, the current means is to combine it with a series of other materials and bury it deep deep underground where it will stay radioactive for many many years. The entire dumping site must be protected from any future developments for thousands of years and it must be made sure that the area chosen as a dumping site must not have underground groundwater reservoirs. If groundwater does come in, it'll be radioactive and it will poison plants and people who consume it.

So because of this, you need to spend millions just to maintain a dump site for waste that doesn't generate any income. Again, as a power plant operator, will you be willing to sustain this cost? Bear in mind, you need to upkeep the dump site for thousands of years, that's billions and billions in investments without any return.

Also as the number of nuclear power plants increase, you need to expand your dump sites or search for newer sites. Each time you expand or set up a new site, you need more non-profitable investments, you make more lands unusable for a few thousand years and you need a more complex system of monitoring.

Also remember that the dump sites have to be huge. It must provide a big buffer zone between the actual place when stuff is dumped and the place where development can start. Even then the places neighbouring the nuclear waste sites will have poor real estate values and can only be used for limited development.

A country like Malaysia has lots of unused lands, but this will not remain the same for thousands of years. Eventually the current 28 million population of Malaysia will become closer to 280 million some day and all these lands will be vital to our future. So wasting it on waste is not a good idea, unless you have huge uninhabitable lands like Australia, where the population is only 22 million as of now.

Power Plant Safety
Yes, there are established safety procedures that ensure nuclear power plants are kept safe at all times. There are numerous fail-safe mechanisms that prevent another Chernobyl from happening. But there's one thing most people keep overlooking when it comes to plant safety. Economics.

All this varies and redundant safety procedures costs a lot of money to keep up. They take up valuable time, cost money in the form of administrative overheads, equipment upkeep, hiring and payroll of skilled professionals like safety engineers and so on.

Yes, the power plant does generate lots of money, but economics is something that is never stable. Once nuclear power becomes widespread and the demand for uranium becomes global, prices are going to change and the economics will change. You cannot, as the plant operator, arbitrarily increase the price of your electricity because you have contractual obligations as well as competitors. So you try instead to cut costs, which is what happens frequently in airline companies and which is what happened at Union Carbide that caused the Bhopal disaster.

The risks of such things happening are too much for a small nation like Malaysia to deal with. Large areas surrounding the plant have to quarantined for decades. In the case of Chernobyl, the liquid radioactive material (that looks a bit like lava) poisoned the groundwater which then poisoned a nearby river.

If, yes *if* such a thing happens, even if it's a one in a million chance, it will cause too much of a devastation to a small country like Malaysia that it can seriously hamper our entire economy and put a serious dent in growth.

Some might argue that regulation will help to prevent any lax in safety maintenance, but one of the things this country is famed for internationally is its corruption. I don't doubt that a gift package of a few cars or a few houses to regulators will give most operators a good review.

Simply put, I don't trust regulations in this country.

Availability of Nuclear Materials
There are only a few countries in the world with deposits of materials suitable for nuclear power plants, and these countries will be the OPEC of the future if nuclear power generation becomes the norm.

Also this relative scarcity of radioactive materials will allow these other nations to have a monopoly on the very thing that powers our entire country.

Call me nationalistic, but I'd really hate to see another country have such a stranglehold over us. At the moment, we're still fine because we have our own oil supplies that prevents us from being kicked around by other nations, but if we depend on others for stuff like uranium, I can bet you that there'll be more interferences and arm twisting happening.

Security of Nuclear Materials
This is one of the major concerns of widespread nuclear power. The very same materials that is used to power a nation can be used as weapons of mass destruction.

This also makes nations with nuclear power plants and the nuclear power plants themselves as a target for those with the intention to obtain these materials.

So again, more money has to be spent protecting the plants. In contrast, nobody is going to try and attack a hydro-electric plant. There's really nothing of value in there.

Summing up, I believe that with the additional overheads, risks and unfavourable economics, nuclear power is not for Malaysia.

I believe that the future of power generation in Malaysia has to be a combination of:
+ Hydro-Electric power plants - For base load capacity
+ Coal-fired or Diesel power plants - For emergency capacity
+ Offshore Wind Turbines
+ Underwater River Turbines
+ Underwater Sea Turbines
+ Concentrated Solar Power (Solar Thermal)
+ Photo Voltaics
+ Nuclear Fusion (still in research)

The thing about alternative sources of power is that none of them on its own can be sufficient to meet huge demands. They must be all implemented and linked via the national grid.

I also feel that it's important that building codes be amended such that newer buildings come with Photo Voltaic cells installed in roofs and built with energy conservation in mind like the new Ministry of Energy Water and Communications building.

Also once Nuclear Fusion is a reality, we must get our hands on that. So there's a need now to build talent in that field.

Edit:
Unless I'm mistaken, E=mc^2 is not usable when we talk about nuclear power generation. We're not destroying the mass of uranium to create that energy. We're using the materials radiated heat to boil water and make steam which powers the turbine.

This post has been edited by DeniseLau: Oct 12 2009, 08:30 PM

I beg to differ. Mass balance of the released components of a fission reaction will show a small loss of mass from the original element+neutron. This lost mass is converted to pure energy by that famous equation of Einstein. The energy(in the form of heat) is then fed to a process fluid (liquid sodium) in the common manner as any power generation plant.

Most of the concerns regarding its application have been very well discussed by DeniseLau already. I would like to add that I feel Malaysia is a little late to jump onto the bandwagon. This initiative would have been a good idea perhaps 20 years ago (but then, we did not, and still dont really have the know how).

Imo, nuclear fission power production will eventually reach a dead end, similar to fossil fuels. The future lies in nuclear fusion. The conspiracy side in me says that its already been discovered, but not revealed to protect "certain" interests

This post has been edited by joe_star: Oct 14 2009, 02:00 AM

Agreed. Countries whose economy relies heavily on the export of oil, will face devaluation of oil if a better alternative was found. Fact remains oil generation is still by far the best.

1) I've forgotten about the little part about nuclear physics during my STPM. So I can't comment much on this.

2) Europe will tend to adopt nuclear energy for its own, as other alternative energy is not really applicable. (Only few countries utilises wind energy).
As for Malaysia, one of my main concern is public opinion. Granted, majority still have an ill opinion when it comes to nuclear energy.

3) I disagree. We should all progress towards the path of sustainable development, else the world would be heading towards its destruction in much shorter time than it's supposed to be.

Really, I felt honoured that you've taken much of your time to construct such.... beautifully written post.

1) Availability of uranium ores: The last that I've read, the ore price is lower than that of silver, even coal at one time. And it's stable too.
However, we all realise this will not necessarily stay should nuclear energy be popular. Thus it is rather difficult to construct an cost-benefit projection should nuclear energy be adopted.

2) Security of Ore: As said above, once nuclear generation becomes widespread, the focus might shift from petroleum/oil to uranium ore. Is it necessarily a good thing? Perhaps. There might be a balancing act for market price for uranium and oil, hence making a major part of the world does not rely on just the whim of world oil prices.

3) Alternative energy: I'll share what I've learned
+ Hydro-Electric power plants - For base load capacity (In Malaysia, Hydro is used to supply the peak load demand. The intermediate is supplied by coal and gas, while base load is by coal.)

+ Coal-fired or Diesel power plants - For emergency capacity (Erm, as i said above, coal is for base load.)

+ Photo Voltaics
(Thing about solar power, is that its output is too small to be considered as useful. What could be done, is perhaps to adopt German technology, where they integrate the PV cells into the building, i.e. the lighting and some electrical appliances are powered by PV.)

+ Concentrated Solar Power (Solar Thermal)
(The amount of sunlight in Malaysia is not constant, hence bringing back the problem of unpredictable output.)

+ Underwater River Turbines
+ Underwater Sea Turbines
(I'm unsure of these two, haven't heard about it before being used in Malaysia)

Really? Nuclear fusion is possible?
If I remembered correctly from what little things I've studied in STPM, one of the condition for nuclear fusion to happen is extremely high temperature, which happens only in the sun. Up till then (4~5 years ago), technology is still yet to be able to emulate the condition in the sun.

But then again, perhaps the emulation is now possible, with CERN's LHC. I don't know.

Anyway, why would you suggest that Malaysia is rather late to begin adopting nuclear energy?

by tnb's estimate, malaysia should require nuclear around 2030 or 2035 depending on how well bakun is performing.

why nuclear?

1.it is a lot more cheaper than coal/oil/gas. i dont exactly remember the figure, but it cost around 2 us cent to generate 1 MW using nuclear.
2.it is highly efficient at full load (very suitable for baseload use
3.malaysia has nearly exhausted all of its potential hydro sites. there is another 2 or 3 hydro projects in the pipeline, but thats about it.
4.unreliability of supply of conventional fuel. where 1 fill of nuclear material can run a plant for around 18 months, you more or less need a constant supply of fuel for a thermal plant.
5. alternative power has low space efficiency. (wind/solar)

micro solar as in germany and other countries has been suggested but high starting cost and long breakeven point is unlikely to see much consumer taking it up.

and the nuclear material used in power plant cannot be interchanged with weapon grade nuclear material. nuclear plant waste nuclear material can be recycled into usable nuclear material.

other than chernobyl, no other failure of nuclear plant has been reported. some nuclear plant have survived huge earthquakes and some has been designed to withstand a plane crashing into it.

For nuclear fusion, the joke is that it's always 50 years away from reality, so in the context of this discussion (~30 years), fusion isn't even a possibility (Note: Unfortunately the joke's moving to becoming 100 years from reality instead)

~lynn~ : Nuclear fusion has been achieved, and not only uncontrolled nuclear fusion, which is often the example used (hydrogen bombs), but controlled nuclear fusion in many purpose built laboratories worldwide (e.g. JET - a tokamak design, there exist other designs too, one of which was featured in spiderman the movie with the lasers, except that it was quite fake ). The problem is that current fusion experiments use up more energy than they ever release out (well actually no, but they only manage to sustain themselves for only a few seconds, which is so short that it doesn't pay back the energy in heating up the plasma in the first place), and thus the reaction isn't self-sustaining, it quenches itself out once you stop supplying energy into it. The next step is to design a reactor that will produce more energy than is input, giving a sustained reaction, and the extra energy being used to generate power for our use. There is a massive problem with this though:

There is an immense neutron flux bombarding the walls of the tokamak, and no one is really sure how long the reactor's walls can withstand this bombardment. This is mainly a material science problem, finding a way to create a material that will be able to withstand this neutron flux without collapsing in some short timeframe.

ITER is supposed to be the first test fusion reactor that will demonstrate a self sustaining reaction (well a plasma really) for about 10-15 mins iirc, which is much more than what current experiments can do. Unfortunately it's hit into funding snags from the participating governments, and the thing seems to have been delayed to 2026 - that's when the real D-T (deuterium-tritium) plasma fusion will occur, while the earlier opening in 2018 will run experiments, and testing the components of the reactor with hydrogen.

So no, fusion is still very far away from being reality. Perhaps our grandkids, but I'd personally be happy to see fusion plants operating on a large commercial scale globally if it happens within our lifetime.

This post has been edited by bgeh: Oct 15 2009, 06:06 AM

The world as a whole, yes as it provides an alternative source of power. Malaysia, NO. Am afraid of sub-standard contract licensing, leading to big boom.

Agreed with the top half part.

Well, this might sound rather paranoid.

A nuclear power plant is a big fat target for enemy's assault should the country be involved in a war. Blow it up and major damage is done.

So basically, up till now the fusion reaction is yet to be self-sustainable?
Yeah I understood that fusion reaction releases way more energy then fission reaction. But as you've said, the energy required to start the reaction up rather nullify the high output. However, if it's self-sustainable, it'll be AWESOME!!!

Agreed! XD

Hmm, didn't realise that E=mc^2 worked in fission, turns out it does.
http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/emc2/emc2.html

Anyway, Fusion has been discovered already, but the problem as bgeh mentioned is that it's not yet giving us a sustainable net output of energy. Also the reaction is destroying the reactor.


Wow, we're using coal for base load? Damn... Here's to hoping Bakun will help.

Anyway, individually none of the alternatives I listed can sustain constant output, but when hooked together it should be possible to get a nice steady supply. But I'm not so sure on the economics of this.


More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civil...clear_accidents
Some of them are unrelated to power plants, but Chernobyl isn't the only one.


Yup, it's quite frustrating, but there's no way around it. Even when it finally does get completed and commercial Fusion power plants become feasible, it's still going to take years before Malaysia gets out hands on it.

What we need a sort of a stop gap solution between fossil fuels and fusion power. Fission is very attractive, but to me it's a risk not worth taking unless you have huge deserts in your country where you can build the reactor and dump the waste.

I like what the UK plans to do, they have this plan where they want to build large offshore wind farms and an assortment of offshore power generation solutions off the coast of Cornwall.

This post has been edited by DeniseLau: Oct 15 2009, 06:18 PM

About Nuclear Fusion, I suggest you guys read up on National Ignition Facility (NIF) from popular science or NIF's website. We're quite near there already, but not really there yet. That machine is amazing.

efficiency wise its quite good, but space wise its not. when a nuclear plant or any thermal plant can be placed in a relatively small area, you require huge area for solar and wind.

no major nuclear plant incident that cause huge damage to environment/surrounding population/staff

and quality is one of the few things you wont have to worry much about. TNB is a relatively capable GLC and their QC/QA/HSE/procedure is very good in recent years. for the first nuclear power plant, confirmed it would not be done by our local chiakia contractor but by pros from france/italy/japan/korea etc.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8297934.stm

I remembered this article when someone mentioned nuclear energy on a small scale.

1) Reaction destroying the reactor? How so? Due to the extremely high temperature of the plasma?

2) Coal as base-load: Well that was what I've learned in Basic Power Engineering subject, as told by my lecturer. XD

3) Different generation will have its effect when being linked to the national grid. I suppose there are some counter-measures for this. But I've yet to learn anything about it (Next semester, perhaps XD), the most I can relate to is perhaps the quality of power supplied.

4) Yeap, where/how to deal with the waste is among the main concern in Malaysia's scope.

5)I suppose UK can do it, as the wind there is much stronger compared to here. However, the wind farm requires a large area in order for it to generate significant amount of power.
Erm, small scale or no, there would still be radioactive by-products no?

Yeah, the issue with solar is space, but the best thing about wind is that you can put it offshore where it doesn't ruin the landscape and where you get better winds. I was thinking about South China Sea, but I haven't come across any study/report on yearlong wind strengths.

As for nuclear, it's not a long term solution so I personally don't think it's worth the investments and risk.

There's this other thing that's interesting though. It's called Clean Coal Technology. The idea is that you burn coal to make steam which powers turbines like normal, but instead of releasing the CO2 into the air, we capture it and stick it into underground reservoirs.

But it's also not a long term solution, but I guess it fits as a short-term solution until we can come up with something better.

1. Read bgeh's post above. It's got something to do with the high energy neutrons banging into the walls of the reactor and "eating" away the material. We need to find a way to stop this from happening or find a material that can resist the impact for long enough that we can make money even if we have to replace the walls every few years.

3. Yeah there are ways to insulate the effects of the power from disrupting the power lines, this is actually easy compared to the other problems.

5. I was thinking: how if we placed a few hundred or thousand wind turbines in the south china sea. But there needs to be a study on wind-speed averages over the span of the whole year before we can decide.

1) But why are you saying that nuclear is not a long term solution? Perhaps due to the waste issue, that one day it'll accumulate too much?

2) Ah, the clean-coal technology. If I'm not mistaken, the proposed and approved coal-fired power plant in Lahad Datu utilises this technology.

3) Your idea about wind farm in the South China Sea is interesting enough. But some of the concerns I felt includes need of building an underground transmission line, which will increase the cost.

To remedy the nuclear waste issue, it could be solved with this (if they make progress):

Using E.Coli to clear Nuclear Waste

Very interesting indeed. Seems as though the concern regarding nuclear energy has shifted towards the cost perspective.

The Manjung coal-fired power plant in Perak also uses the clean coal technology.

It started its operation in 2003, using equipment from Alstom.

The Flue Gas Desulphurisation (FGD) alone cost RM 100 million.

Manjung is 2,100 MW.....the one in Lahad Datu, about 300 MW.

Another requirement for this Manjung plant is that the released water, should not exceed 40 degrees Celsius in temperature.

It is already used as environmental benchmark for coal-fired power plants.


This post has been edited by Kampung2005: Oct 16 2009, 06:04 PM