Nuclear Plants in Southeast Asia?

The ramification of a record high price of crude oil in the last few months manifested itself in Malaysia when Malaysian utility company, Tenaga planned to build a nuclear plant. Mr Mohamad Zam Zam Jaahar, head of Tenaga's nuclear energy taskforce said Malaysia going nuclear post-2020 was looking more and more like a necessity rather than a probability in view of the high oil prices. He zoomed in on the category of middle 1,000MW plants, estimating the approximate cost of the nuclear plant will cost 10 billion ringgit or 4.18billion Sing dollars. The targeted time frame for adopting nuclear energy is in post-2020. The press release from the Edge(22nd July) coincided with Malaysia's Energy Blueprint, which is due to be launched next month, may well include nuclear energy making a substantial proportion.

However nuclear power plants are still much avoided in South-east Asia region as the high over cost of a nuclear facility, problems of nuclear waste storage and the abundance of oil and natural gas makes going nuclear an unattractive option.
But global attempts to replace non-renewable fuel with biofuel such as sugar beets, corn, palm oil and soybean generated a sudden increase in demand for traditional food crops to be diverted into energy production. It ignited unexpected inflation of food prices as witnessed in the 2007-2008 world food price crisis. Prices of soybeans have almost doubled compared to a year ago, from US$332 to US$610 per tonne, prompting protests and panic in Indonesia, as soybeans are a key source of protein for millions of poor. Other little-studied effects such as deforestation, soil erosion and depletion of forests acting as carbon sinks makes burning of non-renewal fuel such as fossil fuel and natural gas more predictable and less damaging.
As cost of energy derived from hydrocarbons increases, more research diverted into nuclear technology may yet tip the balance and hasten the adoption of nuclear energy.

In another report by TODAY on 23rd July,

Japan's Hitachi and US giant General Electric will team up to sell midsize nuclear reactors to meet growing demand for power facilities in Southeast Asia, a Hitachi spokesman said Wednesday.

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The move is aimed at tapping into the markets in countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, where demand for reactors with output of one million kilowatts or less is expected to grow, spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said.

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"We've been developing the core part of midsize nuclear reactors and we will now work closely with our potential customers over details of reactor designs," he said.

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Hitachi and GE will jointly develop compact and advanced boiling-water reactors to try to meet that need, he said.

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