The case against nuclear energy

BEFORE the Malaysian government takes the country down the path towards nuclear energy, every citizen must decide if nuclear power is the right choice for the nation.
For some, the threat of climate change and peak oil has produced a false choice between either going nuclear or suffering unabated global warming. But Malaysia, and indeed, the rest of the world, has an increasing number of clean and renewable energy options to choose from, such as solar, wind, tidal and wave.
The Malaysian government appears to have embraced the idea that the country needs to go nuclear to meet its growing energy needs. Little emphasis appears to have been given to green technologies in the government’s recently-unveiled Economic Transformation Programme.
Kudos to the government for recognising that we need to diversify the nation’s energy mix and decentralise power generation. This is achievable and affordable with the green technologies of solar, wind, tidal and wave. But nuclear energy, which is neither renewable nor clean, is not only potentially catastrophic to human lives, but also exacts a far higher cost economically, socially and environmentally than the green technologies, factors that led Britain’s Sustainable Development Commission to emphatically reject nuclear power as a solution to the country’s energy and climate change mitigation efforts in 2006.
Why the rush into nuclear now? Malaysia has more than 50% in reserve margin or excess power at the moment. In fact, today’s total installed generation capacity of close to 22,000MW is more than the country’s projected demand in 2020.
Perhaps the apparent haste to embrace nuclear energy is because a nuclear plant takes 10 to 15 years to build and the government is keen to plan ahead so the country’s future energy needs are met. Planning and foresight are to be applauded. But even the largest solar installations like Concentrating Solar Thermal plants (which uses mirrors to concentrate a large area of sunlight onto a small area) only require two to five years to complete, making it a far nimbler option, especially in terms of taking advantage of the widely expected reduction in the cost of producing solar energy.
And should the need arise, Malaysia can utilise its vast amount of palm biomass as an interim measure while it brings green technologies on stream. Let us consider the green alternatives to nuclear: