CURRENT DAY NUCLEAR PLANTS ARE VERY SAFE, SAYS UKM SCIENTIST

BANGI (Malaysia) Aug 17 (Bernama) -- Modern-day nuclear power plants (NPPs)
are very safe and have a "fail-proof system", given the advances made by science
and technology, and people need not fear for their safety, said Universiti
Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia -UKM) scientist Prof Dr
Noramly Muslim.

Prof Noramly, a former Deputy Director General of UN International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) stressed that a situation like Chernobyl would not recur.

In the 1986 incident, fires and series of explosions destroyed the
Soviet-era NPP in Chernobyl, Ukraine, where more than 300,000 had to be
evacuated.

The effects of the radioactive fallout is still being monitored today.

Prof Noramly, 69, found that Malaysians, like people elsewhere, have a
"blind fear" that arose out of ignorance about anything to do with "nuclear".

These people are generally ill-informed and do not know much about nuclear
energy, he said.

They are also not aware and do not know that science and technology had made
great strides in nuclear technology and had already developed a "fail-proof
system" for NPPs, he was quoted in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia's news portal.

"People generally fear the unknown but now the situation has changed. So
much is now known," he said, referring to Japan, a country that was devastated
by two atomic bombs during the 2nd World War.

"If anybody should be petrified of the NPPs, it should be the Japanese.
Instead, the country today has over 50 units of NPPs in 17 locations spread out
from Hokkaido in the north to the southern-end of Kyushu."

In the case of South Korea, he said, they have over 60 units of NPPs today,
located in four different parts of the country.

"When they embarked on the project to build the NPPs, they had less than us
in terms of the legal/coordination framework and they were surprised that while
we had these timeline and framework in place, we have yet to undertake to build
our own NPPs," he said.

The South Koreans, Prof Noramly said, had done so well that they recently
clinched a US$40 billion contract to build the nuclear power plant for the
United Arab Emirates.

Developed economies like France, Germany and the United Kingdom had been
largely powered by cheap power provided by NPPs.

In Asia, Even China is now going full-steam to build more NPPs to power up
their growth engines, while Italy, the last European country to hold out against
nuclear energy, is now scrambling to build their own.

Prof Noramly said in some places, it was the local people who clamoured
for the NPPs, because of the industries and economic benefits that the plant
would bring.

He pointed out that Malaysia has a core group of scientists who
are ever ready to set in motion the building of a nuclear power plant to
generate electricity to meet the nation's energy needs.

In fact, this group had long been readied to launch, construct and operate
the NPP once the order was given by the government, he said.

Prof Noramly is currently with the School of Chemical Sciences and Food
Technologies of UKM.

"These specialists had waited for so long that some had grown and retired
and some had moved on to other careers," he said, pointing out that he too was
almost 70 years old.

Prof Noramly, who had been the Director of the Tun Ismail Atomic Research
Centre (PUSPATI), the forerunner of the Malaysia Nuclear Agency, from 1977 to
1982, said nuclear "is the cheapest and greenest" source of electricity that
would be sorely needed when fossil fuels like oil and gas are depleted.

Whether or not the Malaysian government would decide on NPPs, there would be
200 or more new NPPs built around the world by 2030, when Malaysia's energy
demand would increase by 1.5 times and when global Green House Gases (GHG)
emission is targeted for a 50 per cent reduction.

Despite losing two decades of lead time in building Malaysia's own NPP, Prof
Noramly said that there were currently three groups of specialists in Malaysia
who are knowledgeable about nuclear energy.

"Even with government approval, it would take 11 years or so to construct
and commission the plant," he said, stressing that the first NPP would
only complement the present power generation through oil/gas and coal.

And, assuming that the country could have a NPP of 1,000 megawatts by 2021,
there should be a second unit of similar capacity built by 2023 so that one can
be shut down for servicing.

Prof Noramly said the NPP would, by far, be the cheapest form of power
generation at current prices.

It would be almost five times cheaper to produce a unit from NPP than from
oil or almost four times cheaper than gas.

Though it is only one-third cheaper than coal, he pointed that a decision
for the NPP is a decision for three generations since it has a life span of
between 60 and 80 years.

A coal plant with all the green house gas emissions that leads to
global warming has a life span of only 20 years.

As for the green renewable sources of energy like solar and wind, he said it
was almost 14 times more expensive to produce a unit of energy from solar energy
while it was more than three times more expensive from wind.

Even hydro-energy is three times more expensive than NPP.
-- BERNAMA