NADZIR & RAHIMA

Friday, July 17, 2009

Nuclear, Bakun & .....

Nuclear or Bakun?
Malaysia will built the first nuclear power plant within the next 5 years…so that’s the plan at least. I am seriously worried about this and totally disagree with having a nuclear power plant in this country. We are not ready for this…furthermore, are we really run out of option that we need to resort to this nuclear thing? Being an engineer in the industry I should be excited about this…the opportunity to learn the nuclear plant technology! Why not?!

However, being an engineer in the industry, I realize also that our safety practice is not up to those with our European or Japanese counterparts. Do we really care about safety that we could not tolerate even the slightest exposure to the deadly radiation? I saw the discovery channel one day showing the steam turbine rotor replacement at one of the power plant in the US. I can tell you that the level of safety that they practice is really, really, really melecehkan! You have to wear this special suit before going into the working area, wash yourself after you finish working, cannot stay for long hrs at the area, etc….We really are not there yet…

Apart from the safety issue, I also would like to suggest to our decision makers to look at other viable options that is here in this country. The most obvious one…the Bakun Hydroelectric project. TNB have studied the potential of the Rajang River for electricity generation…and guess what? It has a potential of 20,000 MW worth of electricity…but of course you’d have to drown the forests first before it can be done. But why not drown the forest? Oh for god’s sake, don’t tell me its because of environmental issue. We sacrifice the forest so that we don’t need to produce emission to our already dirty air and also so that we don’t need to dispose the radioactive waste anywhere in our country. Right now they are going to commission about 800MW plant at the Bakun site. It was originally planned for 2400MW but due to economic downturn, the project was downsized.

I don’t know why we are all excited about nuclear plant. The Europeans, the Americans, the Japanese are all going all-out into renewable energy these days. So much so that they are spending billions of dollars to built the technology and make it feasible to their people. Now, why not Malaysia do that? Well, the obvious reason is that ……(well, you know…something to do with money)…..Just earlier this month the local paper reported that Petronas have made RM100 billion profit….why not Petronas invest some of the money to build some renewable energy plant in this country. We have sun through out the year, why not build a solar thermal power plant like the PS10 in Seville, Spain? See that pic up there? With the beaming tower like the one we saw in Lord of the Rings...That is what we call awesome!

posted by NADZIR & RAHIMA @ 9:11 PM

2 Comments:

At July 19, 2009 at 12:59 AM, hilal said…

Thumbs up on the article! Keep it up! ;)

Masa belajar dulu2 pon cikgu suruh tingkatkan penggunaan sumber yg boleh diperbaharui..

btw melecehkan = tedious :P
At July 24, 2009 at 12:21 AM, NADZIR & RAHIMA said…

Thanx bro...appreciate it!

boleh jugak pakai 'troublesome' tapi tak terpikir pulak mase menaip tu....