Talks on “System engineering initiative” at UNITEN

Basically, the talks are about exposing students with engineering background, not specifically nuclear engineering on nuclear technology, nuclear plant etc. It is done by developing a system which offers coursework in terms of job (real job, you are making income) in the nuclear industries. The task would be defined by the industry member while supervised by lecturers with a group of students participating in solving the problems. This system is proven to benefits all that are involved.

The talk lasted about one hour and gave a very beneficial knowledge for everyone participating.

malaysia toward nuclear as energy sources

Malaysia has experienced strong economic growth in the last decades. Energy has been a key input to the development and growth of the country. Taking into account the growing energy consumption and domestic energy supply constraints, Malaysia has set sustainable development and diversification of energy sources. Malaysia faces complex choices as it looks to expand it energy mix to ensure its energy security. The electricity demand of Malaysia will increase by 4.7% per year over the outlook period, to reach 274 TWh in 2030.

The per capita electricity demand is projected to be double to 7571 kWh/person in 2030.

The electricity generation mixture consists of gas, coal and hydro-power as the major contributor and a few from oil as well as renewable source like biomass, solar and wind. The generation of electricity from fossil fuels is not just facing the depletion and escalation of prices, but also is a major and growing contributor of pollutants such as CO2, NOX, SO2 for global warming. Meanwhile most renewable sources are either not in full scale commercial capacity or had a significant consequence to the environment. Various environmental, cost and fossil fuel depletion issues have lead most nations including Malaysia, to re-look on the possibility of using nuclear as an energy source in the future as nuclear power plants have much longer lifespan and cleaner source of energy, vis-a-via fossil fuel plants.

Article from Berita Harian, May 26,2009, (pg 25)

NPP safety

First we are going to look into the structure itself, where it will be built. Basically NPP will be built at much more deeper level below the land compared to other structures. The main reason behind this move is too minimise the seismic vibration caused by earthquakes. Whenever there is a presence strong earth quake, the NPP opeartion will be SCRAMed ( will be shutdown immediately ASAP). But at the first stage of selecting place for NPPs, we would look for areas which not prone to earthquekes. This explains, the extra safety measures that a NPP pose in order to overcome problems related to earthquakes. Picture below depicts the earthquake safety measures at a NPP.

Secondly, we would look into the most afraid form of attack, which is the plane crash. Eventhough, we believe one would not make such attack upon a NPP because it will somehow reflect to them back but we don't know how human changes. So let's get prepared for such attack. Talking about plane crashes, in order to fully convert the force of plane at certain speed, it need larger medium. Let's compare the size of Empire State Building and a NPP. Empire State Building collapsed due to its larger size where it absorbed the energy from the planes, while NPP has smaller size and it would not absorbs much energy and the containment wall is strong enough to withstand a plane crash onto it. Here is a link where you can find the facts about it.http://www.nei.org/newsandevents/aircraftcrashbreach/

Thirdly, we would look into the cooling towers and also the tertiary water pump system. Basically, they are made for one main function. Which is to cool the water vapor from turbine and feed it into the reactor. At colling tower, these vapors are condensed at normal temperature in a open space, where it might appear like dangerous gases coming out from the cooling tower. well, actually they are just water vapors.....

If there is no presence of cooling tower, the vapor will be cooled at nearby sea or river. But, the question is will the heat liberated to the nearby sea or river will threaten the living organism there? for example, if the heat from the NPP gives rise to the sea water temperature, it will kill the microorganism which is the food source for fishes. But research shows that, heat exchanged from the NPP will not harm underwater creatures.