CrossTalk: Is nuclear energy the answer for Malaysia?

New Straits Times 27 Jun 09;

Fresh nuclear debate was stirred earlier this month when Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced in South Korea that Malaysia would be developing a reactor. Dr Nahrul Khair Alang Mohd Rashid, president of the Malaysian Nuclear Society, and Dr Ronald McCoy, president of the Physicians for Peace and Social Responsibility, pitch their views with ARMAN AHMAD sitting in.

Nahrul: Depending on what you use it for, nuclear technology can be good (or bad). If you use it for peaceful purposes, then I am all for it. If it is for making weapons, missiles and other things, then this is the wrong use for it.

There is concern now over the proliferation of fuel from nuclear reactors to weapons. But there are certain technologies that make it impossible or very difficult for it to happen.

McCoy: As long as you have nuclear energy in a country, that country is a potential proliferator of nuclear weapons. There are so many examples, among them North Korea.

It is so difficult to control it. You can hide things.

As far as Malaysia is concerned, I am pretty confident that the country is not going for nuclear weapons because it has been so vocal about nuclear disarmament for many, many years. That is not going to change.

My only concern is with nuclear energy itself and all the hazards associated, environmental and health, and the cost involved.

Today with climate change, nuclear energy is not the answer.

Renewable sources of energy, changing lifestyle and sustainable development is part of the answer as well as energy efficiency and energy conservation.

These are all the different factors that go into the question of how we resolve climate change and global warming.

Nahrul: I agree on the more prudent use of energy, better efficiency and so on.

But with our energy needs, we see that at current technology levels there are not many possibilities of having sustainable energy without a good combination of nuclear and the rest.

McCoy: I agree about having an energy mix. But nuclear energy doesn't come into the picture at all.

It is not a clean source of energy. That is a terrible, terrible fallacy.

Nahrul: But if we look at it in its entirety, there is no such thing as clean energy. In a way, there is some level of polluting factor in there although we think it is clean.

The only question is how polluting it is and how much it affects the environment.

Take hydroelectric power for example, we may not think of it as polluting when it is running, but when we build it, we cut down forests.

NUCLEAR WASTE

McCoy: It is all relative. But my single greatest objection to the use of nuclear energy is what do we do to dispose of radioactive waste, which lasts for thousands and thousands of years.

Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years! What is that? 240 centuries! 24 millennia!

If prehistoric man started out with nuclear energy, today if we were still alive we would still be managing his waste. We are talking about radioactive waste forever.

Nahrul: But that is what makes plutonium very valuable today. The long half-life.

Now they are closing the loop. Plutonium can be used as a fuel for another type of nuclear reactor.

So that means we are more or less having an endless source of power supply.

That is why nuclear is getting more and more beautiful.

McCoy: That is very debatable.

Nahrul: (laughs) That is why we are here, right?

McCoy: My greatest concern is the disposal of radioactive waste.

Secondly, there are so many fallacies about the cost of nuclear energy. Nobody can say it is cheap. One of the problems about nuclear economics is that so much of the facts are hidden. This is one of the problems of industry.

When you want to sell a product, you say it is cheap. That is the way corporations and industries work.

Recently, in the International Herald Tribute there was this talk about what is happening in Finland. (After four years of construction and thousands of defects, the reactor's E3 billion (RM14.9 billion) price tag has increased at least 50 per cent.)

It is happening throughout the world. It is a very, very expensive form of energy.

Nahrul: You cannot generalise that because one or two countries say it is expensive, the rest will be expensive too.

You have to look at the local context too.

Secondly, look at how many reactors are now operating, and the companies are not going bankrupt.

But if you compare in terms of cost, with time even the renewable forms of energy will be expensive too because of the technology needed to overcome the technological challenges.

For example clean coal. Even though you have clean coal you still have to stock coal. You have to burn coal all time to create energy. Imagine how much is needed, this is not including transportation.

McCoy: I am not saying coal is cleaner than nuclear. But I am saying that electric power produced by nuclear reactors is clean in inverted commas.

But the whole nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining onwards generates a lot of CO2 emissions. It is not entirely free of CO2 emmisions.

You also have to look at the cost of managing nuclear waste.
CHERNOBYL

You have also to think about the possibility of a nuclear accident. Look at Chernobyl (1986 nuclear reactor accident in Ukraine).

Most of the (nuclear reactor) accidents are caused by human error.

Malaysia has a very bad reputation for maintenance. There is no maintenance culture.

So, one Chernobyl disaster will wipe out this country with radioactivity.

Nahrul: But I don't think that is the right way. Just because...

McCoy: Why are you saying that? You know Murphy's Law -- If anything can go wrong, one day it will go wrong. Can you imagine a Chernobyl in Malaysia?

Nahrul: I will not imagine that yet, because there are more than 400 nuclear reactors in the world and since Chernobyl there hasn't been an accident on that scale.

McCoy: Until tomorrow, when we have an accident, then your theory is finished.

Nahrul: So far, we have only been waiting for that tomorrow.

If you are talking about culture. Actually sometimes culture can evolve with technology.

If you don't have technology, then you will not have a quality culture, because you don't have a need to handle sophisticated equipment.

I think we are really pressed for alternatives for energy because with the depletion of fossil fuel, we will not have the energy we need.

Of course, we can reduce the pressure or the demand for energy through prudent use and becoming more efficient.

McCoy: If you want to take so many risks for nuclear energy, I would agree with you if you had no alternatives. But we have safer alternatives.

We must put our money into research and development of renewable sources of energy. If we put our money in nuclear energy, we will deprive ourselves.

Nahrul: Even with renewable sources of energy it will not be enough. It must be a good mix between all sort of energy.

McCoy: I feel it must be a mix too, but I don't think nuclear energy should be part of this mix.

Nahrul: Technology is moving. What was waste before is no longer waste now. Say for example plutonium and all other wastes.

The spent fuel is being reprocessed and made as a fuel for a new type of reactor. The waste will be very minimal.

McCoy: But when is it coming? If we put our money into nuclear technology, then 20 years down the line, we might discover that no such thing exists.

Nahrul: They are not throwing the waste. Remember the Yucca mountain site?

(US president) Bush created it as a disposal site. Obama is opening it up because the waste can now be used as a fuel for a new source of energy.
EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY

So what we thought before was waste is now actually a resource. It was waste only because we did not know how to make use of it. Technology is evolving.

McCoy: But this is still to be proven isn't it?

Nahrul: Yes. But renewable energies are also yet to be proven. There is no city in the world that is powered by solar energy, for example.

McCoy: It has to be a mix, biofuel, biomass. I hope in the future, we will develop renewable sources of energy, and a culture of efficiency and conversation.

And I think we also have to come to terms with the fact that we must have a limit to economic growth. This world talks about economic growth for what? Where do the profits go to?

Does it go to poor people on the ground? No, it goes into these deep, deep pockets of very rich people.

There has to be a limit, and development must be sustainable. We are using natural resources to the point where we are now in a very serious position as far as climate change is concerned.

Nahrul: If you are talking about renewable sources of energy, there is the example of solar energy. The sun can produce what is called thermal inversion due to the heating due to the refraction of the light around the solar panel. That also must be studied.

McCoy: There is a lot we don't know about renewable energies because we haven't spent money or time on research.

If we put our money in nuclear, then we will be depriving money we could put into research for renewable sources of energy. There are manya lot of countries in the world that don't use nuclear energy.

Nahrul: But those countries today that don't use nuclear power, take electricity from neighbouring countries that produce nuclear power.

McCoy: Yes. Like parts of Europe. From Russia.

Nahrul: So there is no need for them to have nuclear power plants.

These countries in Europe are small. There is no need for them to have nuclear plants, they just buy the power. It is cheaper this way.

Currently there are about 440 nuclear power plants in the world.

McCoy: There are no guarantees for the safety of a nuclear power plant.

Nahrul: We don't look at the stadium that collapsed in Kuala Terengganu (a year after it was built). We look at Kuala Lumpur City Centre, the Petronas Twin Towers or the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

McCoy: But you must also look at the possibility of a dis aster occurring.

Nahrul: When we look at the negative, sometimes we feel that we are not good enough.

(Dr Mahathir, a strong believer in Malaysia Boleh, recently said tak boleh when it came to a nuclear reactor)

Nahrul: (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) surprised me too. When he visited the Malaysian Nuclear Agency, some years ago he said the use of nuclear technology for other things was ok.

But for electricity, maybe not. We have a small reactor in Bangi. It's a one-megawatt reactor. It's been running fine. I was the manager for 30 years. But of course it's too small to have a meltdown.

McCoy: He has never been in favour. We've talked about this in the last few years, and I have always known that he was very much opposed to nuclear energy.