Alternative sources of power: Think twice about taking the nuclear route

I REFER to your report that a paper on nuclear energy, as an alternative source of power for Malaysia, would be tabled at a cabinet meeting later this year ("Cabinet to study nuclear power" -- NST, Oct 21).

Rising oil prices (until recently) and climate change have given the nuclear industry an opportunity to promote nuclear energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuels. It depicts nuclear energy as the best way to solve climate change. This claim has no basis in fact. Nuclear energy is neither effective nor viable. It is not a sustainable energy source and it causes devastating problems for mankind.

How does nuclear energy generate electricity? Instead of burning fossil fuels to produce steam, which is then converted to electricity, nuclear energy uses nuclear fission to generate heat to boil water to produce steam.

In 1954, the head of the US Atomic Energy Commission predicted that nuclear power plants would provide electricity "too cheap to meter".

Twenty years later, the International Atomic Energy Agency forecast that there would be up to 4,450 nuclear reactors of 1,000 megawatts in operation worldwide by 2000. Today, 44 countries operate about 450 nuclear reactors, providing 15 per cent of world electricity generation.

The world does need energy that is safe, clean, affordable, renewable, environmentally sound and socially acceptable. Nuclear energy can meet none of these criteria. But the nuclear industry has propagated many myths, claiming, among other things, that nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gases, is economically viable and that the fast breeder technology will eventually mature and provide unlimited nuclear fuel.

The facts are that in the various stages of the nuclear process, nuclear energy indirectly does produce greenhouse gases, much less than electricity production from burning fossil fuels, but significantly more compared with electricity production from renewable, sustainable energy sources, such as sun or wind.

Nuclear power is associated with several problems. Nuclear reactors generate lethal waste, which emits invisible radioactivity for thousands of years and for which there is absolutely no safe method of disposal. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years. Nuclear accidents through human error can cause widespread radioactive contamination as in the 1986 accident in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

There is also a higher incidence of cancers in the workers of nuclear power plants and the people who live in the neighbourhood.

The cost of nuclear energy is huge. The cost is rising and is likely to continue rising for the foreseeable future. In the 1970s, nuclear power cost half as much as electricity from burning coal. By 1990, it cost twice as much.

Today, it costs about US$0.05-0.7 per kWh, making it two to four times more expensive than electricity from burning fossil fuels. Also, there are the high costs of insuring for accident liability and decommissioning nuclear power plants.

The market itself shows evidence that nuclear power is not financially viable. Since the privatisation of Britain's energy markets, companies have not invested in nuclear energy, as it cannot be competitive without government subsidies. Even in France, where nuclear power accounts for 75 per cent of total electricity production, it has been admitted that nuclear power is far more expensive than electricity from efficient fossil fuel-burning power plants.

The supply of nuclear fuel is limited. Based on current uranium reserves, it is estimated that they will be depleted by 2038, if the Group of Eight major industrialised countries were to build just enough nuclear reactors every year to meet their commitment to reduce by half carbon emissions by 2050. But this timeline could be extended if significant amounts of uranium were recovered from civil and military stockpiles, and by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and enriching depleted uranium.

Fast breeder technology has been touted as another source of nuclear fuel but after decades of research, fast breeders are a technical and economic failure. From 1964 to 1994, the United States experimented unsuccessfully with a few fast breeder reactors, but eventually shut them down. Japan has also failed with the technology. At present, only one or two fast breeder reactors are in operation.

Electricity production is a small part of the climate-change problem, accounting for just nine per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. To solve climate change, we should also implement alternative options, such as energy conservation and efficiency, and renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro, tidal, biomass, etc). Finally, we must make modern living sustainable.

The public and the government must be apprised of the facts of nuclear power. The government and the media have a duty to facilitate a full and transparent public debate on nuclear energy which, if embarked upon, could have dire health, environmental, economic and security consequences for the country.#