Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
On
The Role of Nuclear Electric Power and Public Acceptance
Organized during the Seminar on The Prospects of Nuclear Electric Power in
Indonesia, Jakarta 22 February 2007, by BATAN, JETRO and KADIN
Statement by
Budi Sudarsono
Chairman of Masyarakat Peduli Energi dan Lingkungan
(Energy and Environment Awareness Society)
The introduction of nuclear power in developing countries faces two major obstacles,
namely financing and public acceptance. Financing, because the capital costs of nuclear
power plants are significantly higher than fossil power plants: on a per kilowatt basis
about twice the capital costs of coal-fired power plants and three times the capital costs of
natural gas combined-cycle plants. It is said that capital is scarce in developing countries
and therefore should be used wisely. Public acceptance is necessary, since otherwise
delays caused by protests and demonstrations could easily inflate capital costs due to
possible increases in interest charges and therefore such protests and demonstrations
should be avoided.
In the case of Indonesia, other prerequisites for the introduction of nuclear power into the
Jawa-Madura-Bali system have been met or, even if only partially met could be met
without too much difficulty. The Jamali system installed capacity is nearly 20,000 MW
with an evening peak load of about 15,000 MW. Thus a nuclear unit of 1000 MW can
easily be accommodated within the system even now. A core of experienced engineers
and scientists is already available within PLN and BATAN to undertake the project, not
to mention other experienced personnel in state enterprises and private companies with
the requisite qualifications in the power industry. The demand for power is evident from
PLNs experience in increasing its sales at more than 6 percent per annum. The
constraints in the availability of energy sources is being felt.
The present statement will focus on the role of non-government organizations (NGOs) in
the promotion of nuclear power and in obtaining the public acceptance for the nuclear
power programme. Clearly NGOs have a big responsibility in providing objective
information to the public. If the information is not objective then it becomes public
disinformation and could lead to public deception.
Controversies of public information on nuclear power concerns the following topics.
Safety of nuclear power plant operations.
In the past there have been two notable events involving commercially operated nuclear
power plants: the Three Mile Island II incident in 1979, and the Chernobyl-IV accident in
1986. Both events, traumatic as they were at the time, have been blown up out of
proportion in the past. It is now nearly 21 years after Chernobyl, and perhaps the general
public has largely fogotten. But the true scale needs to be borne in mind. There are at
present 443 nuclear power plants in 31 countries, all providing reliable supply of
electricity safely and cheaply.
Timesonline
February 18, 2007
Today humanity faces its greatest trial. The acceleration of the climate change now under
way will sweep aside the comfortable environment to which we have adapted. Change is
a normal part of geological history. The most recent was the move from the long period
of glaciation to the warmish interglacial period we presently enjoy.
What is unusual about the coming crisis is that we are the cause of it and nothing so
severe has happened since the long hot period at the start of the Eocene epoch 55m years
ago. The planet, when in an interglacial period as it is now, is trapped in a vicious cycle
of positive feedback, and this is what makes global heating so serious and so urgent.
Extra heat from any source, whether from greenhouse gases, the disappearance of Arctic
ice and the changing structure of the ocean, or the destruction of tropical forests, is
amplified.
It is almost as if we had lit a fire to keep warm and failed to notice, as we piled on fuel,
that the fire was out of control and the furniture had ignited. When that happens there is
little time left to put out the fire before it consumes the house itself. Global heating, like a
fire, is accelerating and there is almost no time left to act.
This year, perhaps more thanany other in the two decades since the first alarms were
sounded, marks a shock of recognition: global warming isnt conjecture, alarmism or
partisan overstatement, but rather a clear and very present danger.
I am old enough to notice a marked similarity between attitudes more than 60 years ago
towards the threat of war and those now towards the threat of global heating. Most of us
think that something unpleasant may soon happen, but we are as confused now as we
were in 1938 as to what form it will take and what to do about it.
The Kyoto agreement was uncannily like the Munich pact, with politicians out to show
their eagerness to respond while in reality merely playing for time. Because we are tribal
animals the tribe does not act in unison until a danger is perceived. This has not yet
happened. Consequently we individuals go our separate wayswhile the ineluctable forces
of the Earth marshal against us.
The prospects are grim and even if we act successfully in amelioration there will still be
hard times that will stretch us to the limit. We are tough and it would take more than
climatic catastrophe to eliminate all breeding pairs of humans. What is at risk is
civilisation.
There is a small chance that the sceptics are right, or that we might be saved by an
unexpected event such as a series of volcanic eruptions severe enough to block out
sunlight and so cool the planet. But only losers would bet their lives on such poor odds.
Whatever doubts there may be about future climates, there is no doubt that both
greenhouse gases and temperatures are rising.
Predictions of climate change do not depend only on theoretical models in the form of
computer simulations. There is now a vast array of monitoring activitiessustained
globally. Air and sea temperatures are continuously measured, as are the gases of the
atmosphere, the cloud cover, the floating ice, glaciers and the health of the ecosystems in
the ocean and on the land.
Satellites monitor the Earths ever changing scene. The more subtle instruments aboard
these spacecraft record temperatures at different levels in the atmosphere and the
concentrations of many different gases.
Another important source of information about the cause of climate change is the longterm geological record. We have learnt an immense amount about the history of the
climate and the composition of the atmosphere from the analysis of ice taken from the
depths of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
In 2004 Jonathan Gregory and his colleagues at Reading University reported that if
global temperatures rise by more than 2.7C the Greenland glacier will no longer be
stable. It will melt and will continue melting until most of it has gone, even if the
temperatures subsequently fall below the threshold temperature.
Because temperature and C02 abundance appear to be closely correlated, the threshold
can be expressed in terms of either of these quantities. Scientists Richard Betts and Peter
Cox at the Met Offices Hadley Centre have concluded that a rise in global temperature of
4C would be enough to destabilise the tropical rainforests and cause them, like the
Greenland ice, to melt away and be replaced by scrub or desert. Once this happens the
Earth will lose another cooling mechanism and the rate of temperature rise will
accelerate.
The floating ice of the Arctic serves as a white reflector of the summer sunlight that falls
upon it and helps to keep the world cool. When that ice melts, as soon it may, the dark sea
that replaces it will absorb the suns heat and as it warms accelerate the melting of the
Greenland ice.
While we cannot go back to the world of 1800, when there were only 1 billion of us, we
may not be incapable of lessening the consequences of global heating. If there is a
threshold and if we pass it, the nations of the world could limit the damage by
stoppingand methane. The temperature rise would then be slower, as would the rise of sea
levels, and it would take longer to reach the final steady hot state than it would if we
continued business as usual. Even so, enormous damage would still have been done.
I am not recommending nuclear fission as the long-term panacea for our ailing planet or
as the answer to all our problems. I merely see it as the only effective medicine we have
now. But we will have to do much more than turn to nuclear energy if we are to avoid a
new Dark Age later in this century. We must follow the good green advice to save energy
and we must all do this whenever we can, but I suspect that, like losing weight, this is
easier said than done.
We have to take global change seriously straightaway and do our best to lessen the
footprint of humans on the planet. Our goal should be the cessation of fossil-fuel
consumption as quickly as possible and there must be no more natural-habitat destruction
anywhere.
When I use the term natural I am not thinking only of primeval forests. I also include
the forests that have grown back after farmland has been abandoned. These reestablished
forests probably perform their services as well as the original forests did, but the vast
open stretches of monoculture farmland are no substitute for natural ecosystems.
We are already farming more than the Earth can afford and if we attempt to farm the
whole planet to feed people it will make us like sailors who burn the timbers of their ship
to keep warm. The natural ecosystems are not there for us to take as farmland; they are
there to sustain the climate and the chemistry of the planet itself.
Astronauts who have had the chance to look at our world from space have seen what a
beautiful planet it is. I ask that we put aside our fears and our obsession with personal and
tribal rights, and be brave enough to see that the real threat comes from the harm we
ourselves do to the living Earth.
The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock, is out in paperback this week. Penguin, 8.99
CURRICULUM VITAE
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