Why Nuclear Technology is important for future energy & environment sust...

This is our nuclear video showing a scenario of what happen in the future to Malaysia if we don't take nuclear technology seriously. The video will also explain the environmental effect and how Nuclear Power Plant works.... Hope this video will give you guys a little information about nuclear...

The nuclear power demand.

In this topic, we will debating about the electrical generated by nuclear power plant that supplying the energy daily needed. Although at present the world is fighting the challenge of energy supply, next generations worries will take into account other fundamental aspects as how to run transports and potential lack of water, which are both primary needs. Today, about 85 percent of world energy needs come from exhaustible resources, mainly fossil fuels and as a minor contributor, uranium. The oil supply covers about 34%, by far the largest share, followed by coal (24%), natural gas (21.5%), nuclear (5.5%) and renewables (15%), including traditional biomass. As we know before, one third of these sources is used for electricity production of about 16,000 Terawatt hours per every year. Considering the world energy demand, it must be seriously doubted whether increasing rates of fossil fuel supplies are to be considered sustainable. It is much more likely, that their share will strongly reduce until 2030 in favor of increasing renewable contributions. Moreover nuclear energy today avoids the emission of about 2 billion atm CO₂ annually.

Previously, in 1995, the electric utilities emissions of carbon dioxide world-wide were 32 percent lower than they would have been if nuclear energy had been used instead of fuel fossil. Let we know that the emissions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide were 35 and 31 percent lower, respectively. Globally, nuclear energy has been the most important factor in preventing carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions related to electric power generation. As proved, handling with safety, no other industry has invested so much time and money in the safety aspect of their business than has the nuclear industry. Over half the initial capital investment of a nuclear power plant goes into the safety systems, because of these and other relevant aspects, nuclear plant are to be considered among the best solutions to meet great energetic and environmental challenges. 

In addition, hydrogen production by nuclear energy which is electrolitically, and in the future high-temperature reactors, thermo chemically will assumed as a fundamental role. This so much discussed “energy carrier” is widely seen as the main future transport fuel, especially for the world environmental burden. Since ,its combustion produces only water vapor, with no carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide emissions. In addition,lack of potable water must be seriously considered, because it is set to become a constraint on development in many world regions. In fact, at present estimated that one fifth of the world's population does not have access to potable drinking water, and that this portion will increase due to population growth relative to water resources. The worst-affected areas are the arid and semiarid regions of Asia and North Africa. Wars over access to water, not simply energy and mineral resources, are therefore to be considered conceivable.

As a reflection, where water cannot be obtained from streams and aquifers, desalination of seawater or mineralized groundwater is required. Nuclear energy can help also in this direction, through the industrial process of desalination, which it is generally cost competitive with using fossil fuels. Nuclear energy is also an excellent source of process heat for various industrial applications including synthetic and unconventional oil production and from about 2003 various proposals have been made to use nuclear power to produce steam for extraction of oil. Lastly, use of nuclear energy as a heating source is greatly challenged by the economic factor since the nuclear heating reactors have relative small size and often the lower plant load factor. However, use of very simple reactor could be a possible way to supply heat economically.

Uranium in Nature

In Periodic Table of element, Uranium is in transition element. This element is considered to be natural occurring. They can be found in nature and do not need to be created in laboratory. Some natural occurring element has very short half-life and very unstable isotope. Because of Uranium in transition element, they exist in hard rock’s form naturally .It exhibit high boiling point and likely to be hard and brittle. Uranium was discovered by Martin Heinrich Klaproth. Uranium has existed since the born of our earth. It is radioactive element. In rock’s form, Uranium can be found naturally in 3 type of isotope which is U-238(99.29%), U-234(0.005%) and U-235(0.711%).The half-life of U-238 and U-235 is about 4.47 x 10⁹ years and 7.04 x 10⁸ years respectively. Uranium 238 is the most stable isotope because it has half-life about 4.5 billion years. This number is equal to the age of the world!! That is why there is plenty of Uranium in our life today which is about 50% still have plenty time to decay. For fissionable type U-235, it has about 700 millions half-life because it is less stable. Although it is gone about 98.8%, but there is enough U-235 left available in our earth nowadays. We should note that, Uranium is more abundant than silver, zinc and tin.

Canada is the world's biggest producer of uranium with mines in Saskatchewan. This mine produces about 1/3 of the world's uranium. The other producing countries are Namibia, Kazakhstan, Argentina, Australia, Niger, and the US. In Malaysia, we do not produce Uranium, hence we need to import from above countries if we plan in future to use it in nuclear power plant.

Summary of Lecture Series

According to energy consumption map, about 38% energy resources from entire world have been used to generate electricity. This electricity comes from hydro, biomass, geothermal, wind, solar, nuclear, coal and natural gases. The other sources such as petroleum and natural gases go to industrial, commercial, residential, light-duty vehicle, freight and air craft. Nuclear only used for generating electricity which is about 8.13% from total portion of energy resources. The energy consumption in form of transportation, industry, agriculture, domestic and food the day by day is keep increasing according to The British Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. With the increasing of demand in electricity, the minimum demand (base load) is about 10,258 MW. The latest peak demand is about 15037 MW. How do meet the base load 10,258 MW demand? This base load needs to be supplied by coal, gas and hydro.

All this conventional technologies produce the CO₂ green house gases by process of combustion. This green house gases clearly is not good for our world.  These green gases will make the effect of the earth’s surface warming because it is preventing the infrared radiation from passes through the atmosphere and lost in space. The average concentration of CO₂ today is about 388.15 parts per million (ppm). We must remember that, the breakaway emission of CO₂ is 450 ppm!! With the current population growth, in year 2025, the number of 450 ppm will be achieved. We cannot live anymore when we achieved that number. We are getting closer and closer.

 Increase in carbon concentration is related with the increase in temperature. When the temperature goes up, the temperature at North Atlantic and the Southern Ocean will also goes up. Again, we must remember that this place is the coolest place in our world. This place is the important part of thermahaline circle or The Great Conveyor Belt. What will happen if the heart of this Great Conveyor Belt is affected? We must highlight that, all the phenomenon, the climate change in this world is related with this Great Conveyor Belt. The hot wind is circulated around the world followed this conveyor path and the hot wind is cooled at the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean. We cannot let the heart of Great Conveyor Belt be effected by the rise of temperature. So we have to turn to green energy.

Recovery of uranium for non-conventional Malaysian sources

In this topic, we will learn that the security of uranium fuel supply is an important aspect for countries which that using nuclear power energy. The alternative sources of uranium are identified from the present conventional uranium mines with respect to the present of high demand for nuclear power and uranium. Futhermore, this topic will also describes about the material such as Xenotime(YPO₄) which is a yttrium phosphate mineral is a recovered by product from tin mining industry. Unlike another rare earth mineral called monazite, there is higher content of uranium in Xenotime as to that of thorium. For our knowledge, there are about 1-2% U₃O₈ found in this material and the highest compared to the other tin by product minerals.

The process that we called a “hydrometallurgy” was developed by researcher to produce uranium and yttrium oxide concentrates. This process involved alkaline fusion, acid leaching and frictional precipitation stages. The inclusion fractional precipitation stage in the process enables to separate yttrium from the uranium. Previously, the uranium contaminated organic DEHPA was sent to Malaysian Nuclear Agency for storage and disposal when the Asian Rare Earth plant in Lahat Datu, Perak was closed in year 1996. As we can know that, DEHPA was used as a solvent extraction solvent for separation of light and heavy rare earth elements. There is about 31,500 liters of this waste and EDXRF analysis show that the uranium content is 990 ppm and the total rare earth content is 25,890 ppm present in this waste.

Hence, the distribution coefficient and separation factors for these elements were determined so as to conduct an efficient stripping process. The Malaysian tin by product minerals are also known to be contaminated with radioactive elements. For our general information, the uranium content in Malaysian Zircon mineral ranges from 0.06-0.18% U₃O₈ and Malaysian ilmenite from 0.01-0.07% U₃O₈. As this radioactive elements is found to be contaminated both of the surface  as well as in the crystals, physical and chemical processes were developed to remove them.

The operation and maintenance of electron beam machines from nuclear Malaysia’s experiment.

First of all, we known that the first high energy electron beam machine (EPS3000) was installed in Nuclear Malaysia around 1991. At the beginning, it was a prototype machine that produced by Nissin High Voltage (NHV) with variable energies from 0.5 to 3.0 MeV and maximum power of 90 kWatt. The machine was initially used and operated for research purposes but later the irradiation service was opened for local industries.

Apart from the EPS3000, a smaller and self –shielded Curetron was also installed. It was having energy around 200 keV and maximum power about 0.4 kWatt. By the way, the machine is used only for surface curing or coating related research. The operation of the both machine have carried out by local technician. However, at the earlier stage, the major maintenance works were conducted by designated engineers that provided by the manufacturers.

Over time and experience gained, most of the maintenance are now being carried out by the local engineers and technician. In late 2009, a new 1 MeV, 50 kWatt manufactured by BNP of Russia was installed to complement the current  irradiation service. Lastly we can conclude, this is a different type of EB machine but in term of operational safety and maintenance, the requirements are almost similar.

Why is having a nuclear power plant in your local area is A GREAT IDEA?

Nowadays, the nuclear energy is the greenest energy in the Earth. It is greener as we compared with the other power generating plant in Malaysia. Other construction of power plant is using high amount of concrete to build the structure. As we know, concrete will release high amount of carbon dioxide in the air. For example, now we have under construction Bakun Dam located at Sungai Balui Sarawak. This dam will be the tallest concrete dam in the world and becoming one of the largest dams in Asia. The dam has about 16.71 million cubic meters of filled volume and catchment area about 14,750 km square. The gross storage capacity is 43,800 million cubic meters. Can you imagine how much concrete is required to build this dam? How much carbon dioxide will be released by the concrete? How much environmental creatures need to be sacrificed with that large amount of catchment area? Absolutely, having the nuclear power plant is A GREAT IDEA.

As we can see from TNB itself, but not from political view, TNB actually not completely produce the electricity itself. TNB also depends to the other producer such as IPP (Independent Power Plant). The IPP is owned by individual party such as Tan Sri Al-Bukhary, Vincent Tan and so forth. Because of that, TNB need to buy the electricity from them, then TNB sell to us. We can see that, the price of electricity is indirectly depends from other producer. Then Malaysian life will be affected with the rise of fuel cost and operation cost of IPP. As an alternative, the nuclear energy is more profitable than other energy production. This could help to reduce the electricity cost and the Malaysian should think about it. Absolutely, having the nuclear power plant is A GREAT IDEA