The intense media scrutiny of nuclear power following the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan has rightly caused many commentators and policymakers to question its use in Malaysia.

Zuraimi Abdullah recently wrote in the New Straits Times that "the key issue is the strict discipline and expertise" needed to manage a nuclear plant, while others have loudly debated safety and reliability issues.

But are these questions the right ones?

Messenger Abdullah, for example, also noted in his article that nuclear power development "does not severely impact mankind and the environment," nor does it have "market price volatility like coal and fuel."

Both of these claims, however, need to be reexamined.

NONENuclear fission produces some of the most hazardous elements on earth, and the nuclear fuel cycle expends enormous amounts of energy to mine, leech, and enrich uranium from the earth, transport it, process it into fuel, place fuel assemblies into reactors, remove them for interim storage, and permanently sequester nuclear waste.

Reactors create more than 100 dangerously radioactive chemicals, including Strontium-90, Iodine-131 and Cesium-137, the same toxins found in the fallout from nuclear weapons. Some of these contaminants, such as Strontium-90, remain radioactive for 600 years, concentrate in the food chain, are tasteless, odourless, and invisible.

Uranium mining operations around the world, the key source of fuel for any Malaysian reactor, also have a deplorable environmental record. These facilities have been known to repeatedly contaminate land, water, workers, and even communities with radioactive dust and polluted water, often near indigenous communities.

Economic shackles of the foreign kind

Reliance on uranium fuel, moreover, poses two types of economic costs, dependency and price volatility.

In terms of dependency, investments in new nuclear plants would only make Malaysia dependent on foreign deposits of uranium.

nuclear power plant reactor fusion 040309 02Kazakhstan, Namibia, Niger, and Uzbekistan together were responsible for more than 30 percent of the world's uranium production in 2008.

Over the past several years these countries have suffered from autocratic rule and political instability.

It is not inconceivable to imagine a scenario in which unstable or hostile regimes controlling only 30 percent of the world's supply of uranium could nonetheless induce price spikes and volatility in uranium supplies that could have devastating consequences for Asian countries.

Expected shortfalls in available fuel contribute to the volatility of uranium prices at existing plants. For example, the cost of uranium jumped from $3 (RM10) per liter in 2001 to $18.50 (RM56) per liter in 2007, an increase of more than 600 percent.

About 200 tonnes of uranium is required annually for every 1,000MW reactor and that uranium fuel accounts for 15 percent of the lifetime costs of a nuclear plant, meaning that price spikes and volatility can cost millions of dollars, affecting the profitability of a plant.

Questions needing urgent answers

Uranium price volatility has also been influenced heavily by the unexpected introduction of secondary supplies and gluts in the market, connected in part to sudden increases in supply from cancelled and shutdown reactors and the dilution of highly enriched uranium from surplus nuclear weapons.

These facts imply that both proponents and opponents of nuclear power in Malaysia need to ask a different set of questions, such as:

  • What would the full costs of a new nuclear power plant be for Malaysia?
  • Who would pay?
  • Who is benefitting?
  • Where would the facility go?
  • Where would the uranium come from?
  • How would investments in nuclear power tradeoff or hurt efforts to promote renewable energy?
  • In what ways would a nuclear power plant impact Malaysian energy security?
  • Who would pay for decommissioning?
  • Who would subsume liability for a nuclear accident?

It is largely the answers to these questions, rather than the incident in Japan, that will dictate the future of nuclear power in Malaysia.

Benjamin K. Sovacool, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, is the author of Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power and co-author of the forthcoming The International Politics of Nuclear Power.