Nuclear power not suitable for Malaysia?
Posted by Jae Senn on March 19, 2009
In today’s Malaysiakini, some idiot physician says that nuclear power is not suitable for the world to use based on some dumb leftist disinformation that has as much scientific content as Al Gore’s “An Incovenient Truth”.
“The often quoted excuse that nuclear energy is clean, cheap and safe is a myth.
“Radioactive waste generated by nuclear reactors takes a millennia to decay as the world has yet to discover a safe and efficient method to dispose of it,” McCoy added.
He said plutonium as one example.
“Plutonium has a half-life of 240 centuries. Is radioactive waste a legacy we want to leave behind for future generations? The argument that nuclear energy is cheap is far from the truth. Most nuclear reactors are heavily subsidised and no one knows the real cost of constructing nuclear reactors.
“In addition, nuclear reactors can only operate for a maximum of two decades, after which they will have to be decommissioned. This will incur huge expenses.”
McCoy retired in 1996 as an obstetrician and gynecologist to devote more time to the work of nuclear disarmament.
He hoped that the 20,000 babies he delivered over 40 years in Malaysia could live in a safer, nuclear-free world.
McCoy said the mechanism of nuclear energy production, that of generating nuclear fission to heat water and produce steam that powers turbines, is in actual fact a very expensive way of boiling water.
He added that nuclear energy, because of its potentially catastrophic consequences, must never be considered an alternative by Malaysia, saying ‘Malaysia is a small and narrow country’.
“Regardless of where you build a nuclear reactor in Malaysia, no matter how far away from the city, the entire country and in fact, the entire Asean region, will be at risk.
“To put things in perspective, after the Chernobyl disaster occurred in Ukraine, nuclear contamination was discovered in as far as Scotland,” Dr McCoy remarked.
Okay, aside from that trite, he did make one good point - Malaysia doesn’t have a culture of maintenance, and our nuclear reactors will be buggered up pretty soon because it will be run by monkeys.
Well, that’s not an outright quote of course, but that’s basically the point.
We can see how much of that anti-nuclear claptrap has gone into this doctor’s mentality. That’s like saying that taking a flight is dangerous because so many aviators have died in the past, and that the Wright Brothers’ first airplane is a dangerous pack of sticks and paper.
Okay, let’s look through his disinformation one by one.
1) Radioactive by-products takes up to a millennium to decay
This is only true for designs intended to enrich uranium into plutonium, i.e. fast breeder reactors. Fast breeder reactors are not merely power generation reactors, they are also processing plants to produce weapons-grade plutonium, the sort that takes a millennium to decay!
At present, most developed nations are moving away from fast breeder reactors, unless they wish to produce nuclear weapons while generating electricity at the same time. For example, Iran.
In the event that they do use fast breeder reactors, new designs have made the neutron-capture and thermal-generation stage open-loop, thus preventing substantial enrichment of plutonium in the by-products and instead, the reactors will produce short half-life fissile material that is used for medical or industrial purposes.
In comparison, compact nuclear reactors from Hyperion and Hitachi produce short half-life byproducts which “soft” radioactive output is easily absorbed by the reactor housing itself, thus posing absolutely no environmental harm.
Furthermore, while it is true that dangerous plutonium by-products may take a thousand years or more to decay completely, a spent fuel rod’s radioactivity would have decreased by over 99.9% after 40 years, while for the rest of the remaining 1000+ years its radiation output borders between low to negligible.
2) Nuclear reactor construction is heavily subsidized and no one knows their real cost.
This sentence itself is an oxymoron. Of course we know the real cost for building a nuclear reactor! We even have compact nuclear reactors nowadays that are capable of producing 20kW to 80kW for decades while not having any harmful by products, such as the Hyperion Nuclear Battery and Hitachi’s micro nuclear reactor.
We have 20kW to 100kW nuclear reactors powering nuclear carriers for decades now. Scaling up the designs with larger reactor cores, boiler chambers and turbines, we end up with nuclear plants capable of anywhere between 25MW to over 500MW output.
3) Nuclear reactors can only function for two decades
This is one of the stupidest points that he raised. 1st- and 2nd-generation reactors can function for 20 to 30 years, but that is 1970s technology. Furthermore, their lifespan is due to gradual weakening of the reactor core due to radiation and high pressures.
The current 3rd-generation reactor designs can last up to 60 years. Nuclear fuel reprocessing and reactor core rebuilds can extend a nuclear reactor’s lifespan by a few more decades.
4) Linking nuclear reactors to nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament
Again, this statement is not just ignorant, it’s full of disinformation.
Current 3rd-generation reactors that use Low Enriched Uranium (which by itself isn’t weapons-grade) do not produce weapons-grade by-products, nor do they pose a significant environmental risk, if at all.
Uranium is as abundant in the Earth’s crust as tin, and silver is 35 times rarer than uranium. There are natural nuclear reactors on the face of this planet in which natural uranium deposits produce a self-sustaining chain reaction.
There will never be a time when the world is “nuclear-free”. Background radiation from radon and uranium will always be around. Our primary source of energy, the Sun itself, is a continuous nuclear fusion reactor. The source of geothermal heat itself is due to nuclear reactions within the Earth’s core (which also contributes to background radiation).
Furthermore, other than nuclear energy (both fission and fusion), there is no other practical way to satisfy the energy demands of the world short of a Dyson swarm orbiting the Earth (or the Sun at slightly beyond Earth orbit!), capturing the Sun’s rays while beaming down electrical power through microwaves.
This statement is just another ignorant leftist fear-mongering tactic to support an equally ignorant anti-nuclear-energy mentality.
5) Nuclear reactors are just a very expensive way to boil water
Well, of course it’s more than just that. You see, nuclear reactors can generate several million Pascals of pressure. This amount of pressure can drive turbines at almost supersonic speeds, and the temperatures attained (and hence the thermodynamic efficiency) is far, far higher than any other form of turbine power generation.
Proposed 4th- and 5th-generation nuclear reactor designs will also incorporate direct energy conversion mechanisms that will capture the UV output of the nuclear reactor in addition to its thermal energy.
Carbon nanotube arrays have also been shown to be capable of harnessing heat and acoustic energy directly, and this might be a potential mechanism to capture reactor heat more efficiently than using a turbine (or it might be used in conjunction with a turbine).
Outside of a reactor core, there is very little high-energy radiation that can be captured as electricity by Faraday cages due to the use of neutron dampers and reflectors such as uranium-238 and beryllium that slows down, reflect or capture neutrons and hard (ionizing) radiation from the reactor core.
There is absolutely no way that a solar heater array, fuel-fired turbine plant, geothermal plant or hydroelectric dam can even approach the power output and efficiency of the nuclear reactor, thanks to the immense temperatures and pressures that it can impart to water.
Therefore, it’s not just an “expensive way to boil water”. To those without any engineering knowledge (and scientific charlattans), it would appear to be so. That’s just like saying that driving a car is like straddling across two motorbikes just because superficially, both modes of motorized transport have four wheels.
Oh, and did you also know that the water in the reactor is primarily for core cooling, and the water gets boiled as a result of drawing heat away from the reactor core? Does that make a car’s radiator a complicated way of boiling water?
6) Chernobyl disaster, the potential for nuclear meltdown and the risk to Malaysia and the whole of Asean.
Yet another irresponsibly fear-mongering piece of disinformation.
The reactor at Chernobyl was a primitive design using highly enriched uranium fuel which by itself is weapons-grade, and its by-product is weapons-grade plutonium. The reactor’s meltdown was caused by human error itself, and not due to the inate danger of the reactor. Specifically, the operators were unaware of xenon poisoning and removed the reactor’s control rods - something that must never be done, has never been done, and has never again been done anywhere else.
Since then, subsequent nuclear reactor designs have incorporated many passive and active safety mechanisms to prevent nuclear meltdown. In the case of modern reactors that use low enriched uranium, there is absolutely no possibility of nuclear meltdown.
I am pro-nuclear energy because it truly is a clean and cheap source of energy once we get it right. With new methods of decentralized power generation such as micro reactors and nuclear batteries that do not pose a threat to the environment while providing consistent electrical output for a few decades, this appears to be a highly practical way to go.
Local councils can deploy these decentralized self-contained miniature nuclear reactors in every district, and tie them up to a national grid (or as a separate mini-nuke reactor grid). Not only will the power grid be more survivable, we would be able to distribute the risk of power outages across larger geographical areas and hence obtain a much higher grid efficiency with less breakdowns, brownouts and blackouts.
Fear-mongering by global warming preachers and anti-nuclear proponents are just harming mankind’s chances of survival into the next five decades. Such non-constructive and dubious arguments from malinformed “experts” (who are, more often than not, treading in unfamiliar territory beyond their scope of expertise) will just retard the development and progress of the human race while depriving us of practical plans for the future.
Finally, here’s a screen capture of the article from Malaysiakini:
The funny thing is that the “nuclear reactor” pictured there is a Tokomak. That’s a fusion reactor, the holy grail of clean nuclear energy in which hydrogen fuel undergoes self-sustaining nuclear fusion just as the Sun does.
The Tokomak picture makes this article all the more ironic as it is the best power-generation technology that is currently being researched by nuclear physicists, and it is totally non-polluting and has no harmful by-products at all. If we can finally develop a working Tokomak reactor, it’s been said that we would have mastered nuclear fusion and our world will no longer have any energy crises.
And yes, it’s technically a nuclear reactor.
A nuclear-free future? Not by any chance, not even by a close mile.
