Nuclear power plant for Malaysia?

May 6th, 2010 at 13:23 · Filed Under Blogging, Politics, Technology 

Two days ago, the Malaysian government announced that the country is considering to have nuclear power plant by 2021. This was certainly a good news, but after a while of mind mingling, I think the implementation could be a disaster!

The nuclear energy is the greenest energy currently available on Earth. James Lovelock, a scientist, environmentalist, futurologist and the father of Gaia Hypothesis wrote in his book: “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”, that the nuclear energy is indeed greener than any other form of power generating plants including solar voltaic and wind energy farm. A 1GW wind farm requires 2 millions tons of concrete, enough to build 30,000 homes for 100,000 people. That quantity of concrete would release 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

The under-construction Bakun Dam, located in Sarawak on the Balui River, will be the tallest concrete-faced rockfill dam in the world and the largest dam in Asia outside of China. Its powerhouse with 8 penstocks to powertrains comprising 8 vertical shaft Francis turbines of 300MW each, 8 air-cooled generators of 360MVA each and 8 oil-immersed transformers (360MVA each) will generate about 2.4GW of electricity. The dam has 16.71 million cubic meters of filled volume.  With catchment area of 14,750 km square, its gross storage capacity is 43,800 million cubic meters. How much concrete is required to build this dam? How much carbon dioxide will be released by the concrete? How much biodiversity would have perished under catchment area that large?

I read from various sources about people’s objections (including politicians’) of this nuclear energy project. This should not be a political issue and never be one. This should be an environmental, safety and social-economic issues at top.

TNB, the sole electricity distributor/supplier in Malaysia is not the sole energy producer. TNB buys, under contract, energy from many other producers. Unfair advantages, unscrupulous practice and increasing fuel cost in the produce-supply chain have contributed to rising energy cost, leading Malaysians to cry foul. The substandard service provided by TNB worsens the situation. As a corporation with revenue of MYR25.75 billion and net income of MYR2.6 billion as of fiscal year 2008, TNB is cutting more corners to reduce its operating costs and to maximize its profit with unhealthy practices, e.g. bi-monthly meter reading practice has stirred uproars in recent week. Being greenest, nuclear energy is more profitable than any other energy production. Could this help to reduce electricity cost for Malaysians considering the unhealthy practices and unfair advantages TNB has in its glossary bag?

I am not going to write more about TNB’s malpractice and sluggish substandard service. Ask any Malaysians, they will be able to tell you stories whole day and night. Instead, I am going to write more about safety.

The next question: Is it really safe to have nuclear power plant in Malaysia? This question does not imply that nuclear power plant is not safe. Rather, the human factors in managing and operating the nuclear power plant.

Alongside the nuclear physics in the power plant is the safety critical computer system, which includes both hardware and software, that is used to control and monitor the nuclear power plant. This safety critical system is the most crucial part and the entire operation of a nuclear power plant heavily relies on it.

Safety critical system is a computer (including software), electronic or electromechanical system whose failure may be a catastrophe, causing injury or death to human beings. This safety critical system comprises high integrity software. The safety critical system, both hardware and software, will likely be integrated and maintained by foreign contractors.

Nuclear power plant software are developed using Ada and/or SPARK programming language. SPARK is a subset of Ada. In the mid 1990s, UTM (University Technology Malaysia) KL campus was teaching Ada in CASE (Center for Advanced Software Engineering). At that time, CASE was a collaboration between UTM and Thomson CSF under special arrangement between the government of France and Malaysia. The Ada course was not long lived. Two years later, it was replaced by Java due to ignorance and market driven trends. Java is not a suitable candidate for high integrity, safety critical, real-time and distributed application development. Today, none of the universities in Malaysia is teaching Ada. According to my hitherto knowledge, apparently none of the Malaysia academies have submitted any high integrity and safety critical system related papers in international conferences and scientific journals.

It does not only require software engineers with Ada or SPARK knowledge. In safety critical software engineering, the individual developers, the entire team and organization are required to go through rigorous software development and safety critical validation processes. It takes years to achieve Carnegie-Mellon’s SEI (Software Engineering Institute) CMM (Capability Maturity Model) Level 5. Safety critical system development requires utterly strong discipline and engineering ethics in every requirement, design, development, testing and maintenance process and every process needs to be validated. Other than software process, there are many other non-software related risk assessments to comply.

Malaysia lacks qualified software engineers of such competency to develop and to maintain high integrity software system. It is costly to maintain such system by contract. The maintenance will increase the cost of energy production and hence will be borne by consumers.

The safety critical system of a nuclear power plant must be thoroughly tested with proven track records. With the loosey-goosey attitude of many Malaysians, will they have capability to manage the system and safety critical issues? Will they be effective to respond to emergencies, for example, system shutdown or nuclear melt down?

The disposal of nuclear waste poses another safety issue. If the engine of a RMAF (Royal Malaysia Air Force) fighter jet could go missing and be exported, can you imagine the potential hazard of missing nuclear waste?

Objection should be rational, not emotional. It is imbecilic to politicize the objection without scrutinizing facts. I, in my book, embrace nuclear energy for it is the greenest energy. On the contrary, I do not have any confidence in the management of safety related issues in Malaysia.

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Comments

11 Responses to “Nuclear power plant for Malaysia?”

  • dragon on May 8th, 2010 13:14 1

    Good writing about the safety issues.

    In fact, it needs to build a uranium enrichment plant nearby to produce enriched uranium through the process of isotope separation which increase the percent composition of uranium-235.

    As for nuclear waste management, there is nuclear reprocessing plant to separate components of spent nuclear fuel which it is unlikely. IAEA will not allow that. So the next and only available option is to put the waste in radiation shielded containment and to be transported to nuclear waste repository, e.g. Yucca Mountain in Nevada U.S.A. or IAEA approved site.

    龙

  • Polan on October 4th, 2010 13:19 2

    Dear author,

    Malaysia already has an operating nuclear reactor and it has been in operation for over 20 years at the Agensi Nuklear Malaysia facility in Bangi.

    No such accident has occurred all this while, so under what justifications do you base your judgement that Malaysians can not operate a nuclear reactor?

  • Ziggy on November 9th, 2010 13:20 3

    Dear Polan,

    20 years is not a good yardstick to claim that Malaysia is capable of handling a nuclear reactor. Not even if Malaysia is given 50 years. Even first world countries have encountered problems related to nuclear power plant. For instance, Japan built its first nuclear power plant more than 50 years ago (during the early 1960s). However, it would be foolish to assume that there won’t be any accident at all since the Japanese has such long history and experience in handling and managing nuclear power plants. Take a look at Tokaimura incident in 1999 affecting more than 300,000 people. And what about the sodium leakage accident in Tsuruga in 1995. Not to mention the fire and explosion in Tokaimura’s reprocessing plant in 1997. All these incidents happen 30 years after Japan built its first nuclear reactor.

    Mr. Polan, are you fully certain (as in 100% certain) that Malaysia won’t run into such risks with its own power plant? That there won’t be any accident at all? Because if you are only 99% certain, that 1% uncertainty would destroy and devastate countless of Malaysians when its nuclear power plant experiences similar incident as in Chernobyl. Remember, accidents, despite mankind’s tremendous effort to avoid them, do happen. To err is human. And when that happens, how would Malaysia handle this, especially when it is affecting tens to hundreds of thousands of people.

  • Ken Yeong on November 10th, 2010 11:22 4

    Security and safety is of paramount importance, but it’s not the only issue. Let’s also look at the opportunity costs of continued reliance of fuel imports, loss of green power manufacturing and R&D and the thousands and thousands of jobs renewables can generate for Malaysia. We have an advantage over China for Western technologies manufacturing because there’s alot less risk of intellectual property theft.

  • Ziggy on December 20th, 2010 13:30 5

    It is true that Malaysia cannot be continually relying on its own fuel. There will come a time when Malaysia will need to resort to other sources of energy and I believe it would be sooner than we think.

    But why nuclear? Have Malaysia considered other alternative energy sources such as wind, wave, solar or even biomass since there are tremendous amount of waste produced from its palm oil industries. Malaysia produces some 160 million tonnes of palm oil waste annually (such as empty fruit bunches, fibres, fronds, trunks and kernels) which are discarded, either burnt in the open air or left to rot in waste ponds. Expert estimated that these massive amount of biomass is equivalent to 300 million barrels of oil annually, more than what Petronas produces annually (about 230 million barrels per year). I’m certain with such capacity, creating thousands of jobs in this sector wouldn’t be too difficult at all.

    And why not wave energy since Malaysia is virtually surrounded by water. In a study published in ARPN Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2010, researchers found that wave energy could be a potential energy provider in Malaysia particularly along the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia. So, why not consider such safe and clean alternatives.

  • Dr. Keong on April 1st, 2011 23:16 6

    I would rather have a CANDLE than CANCER. Therefore, I would rather just have my CANDLES than live beside a NUCLEAR power plant.

    For sure I will ONLY elect a goverment who can promise a nuclear-free Malaysia.

  • Adrian Hoe on April 17th, 2011 10:15 7

    If you prefer CANDLE, then why are you surfing the net? :D

  • Bard Candy on April 20th, 2011 11:53 8

    Most insightful and thought provoking. Nuclear Reactors are definitely not meant to be in Malaysia. As we excel in science and research the world is opening up its resources to us.

    Rudolph Diesel deifinitely did not think of making diesel from algae. (It was peanuts actually.)

    Same as to using Biomass and other forms to derive our energy needs. Nuclear reactors are becoming some what obsolete. ( I’d believe Einstein would be pleased with this.)

    Those billions can be put to good use and place us (Malaysia) in a better light.

  • Adrian Hoe on April 20th, 2011 23:35 9

    Bard Candy: Are you a fan of Einstein?

  • Thousand Miles on April 21st, 2011 12:25 10

    Dr. Keong:

    Convince me that you’re also one in the 15% of the world population that do not use cellphone, on the grounds that the microwave radiation of cellphone could cause cancer — just like what you believe in the nuclear radiation from a nuclear power plant.

    And do you seriously think that burning candles is green and harmless to health? How naive.

    千里

  • Passerby on April 21st, 2011 23:22 11

    Interesting read!

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