Will Japan’s tsunami wave hit Pakistani shores
By Shahid Javed Burki
Monday, 04 April, 2011
WILL the tsunami waves unleashed by the giant 9.0 earthquake in Japan reach Pakistani shores? Not in the literal sense. The waves died out quickly doing little physical damage outside Japan. But they produced another kind of turbulence that will surely affect Pakistan as the viability of the atom as the source of electric power begins to be questioned once again.
Pakistan facing a serious power crisis that has already taken a heavy economic toll was depending on the development of nuclear power to increase generation and thus close the severe demand-supply gap that has proved to be so difficult to overcome. Of the three domestic sources of energy available, one (gas) is being rapidly exhausted, the second (hydro) is proving difficult to exploit for political reasons, and the third (coal) faces numerous environmental problems.
Nuclear energy seemed like a good option until recently when the 40-year old reactor at Fukushima was hit by the earthquake and inundated by the tsunami waves. It had to be shut down. How much health damage it has done to the Japanese who came in the way of the radiation produced by the troubled reactor will not be known for years. What is known is that the viability of nuclear power is being questioned all over the globe. This has happened before.
After the “Three Mile” accident to a reactor in the United States (it happened in 1979) development of nuclear power for civilian use was slowed down. Confidence had begun to return when Chernobyl happened in the Soviet Union in 1986.The Russian accident was much more serious as was its impact on the development of the nuclear industry.
The medium to long-term impact on the future of the nuclear energy will depend on two things. First, how fast cooler and more rational heads prevail over those who are currently in a state of hysteria. The first reaction came from conservative countries such as Germany that ordered that seven of its old reactors should be immediately slowed down. Even Beijing temporarily suspen ded the approval of new nuclear reactors.
In this environment it was not easy to point out by those who look at the environmental advantage, that even under the worst case scenario, the number of deaths from Fukushima will be less than the lives lost every year because of the health problems caused by coal-fired electric plants. Coal mining accidents killed 2,400 people in China alone.
For Pakistan, the only silver lining visible in this very dark cloud is that it had turned to China as a supplier of nuclear energy. Chinese built reactors are already operational at Chasma and more are on the drawing board. During one of the many visits President Asif Ali Zardari has paid to China, the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding which, if fully implemented, will have nuclear power become a major source of energy supply.
The silver lining in the dependence on China is for the fact that for all the countries exporting nuclear technology, China appears to be the most advanced in terms of making the science and engineering behind the reactors safer than it is today.
The new technology being developed in China will be used in two reactors on a peninsula jutting into the Yellow Sea. The authorities are confident enough that this will be a much safer way of producing nuclear power than turned out to be the case in Fukushima-Daiichi types of machines. The crippled Japanese reactor used tightly packed fuel rod assemblies each with about 180 kilograms of uranium.
These packages were generally cooled by water and once the fuel was spent they were kept for hundreds of years at what were considered to be safe sights. The design used by the Japanese at Fukushima had two defects that were not present in later reactors. The backup generators used for pumping water into the reactor were located in the basement and therefore easily inundated once the tsunami water rushed in at great speed. The second problem was that the spent fuel was stored on top of the building which made it exceptionally vulnerable if the building itself got compromised.
The Shidao plants are being built by the state-owned Huaneng Group, the biggest Chinese electric company. It will attempt to prove that the technology can work on a commercial scale. Each plant can meet the power needs of cities with population of 75,000 to 100,000 people at the United State’s level of consumption.
The new Chinese design uses small uranium balls rather than rods as the core of the reactor. Thousands of balls will be used, each with its own graphite packing which will prevent radiation from leaking even in the case of a malfunction.The reactors will also be cooled by a non-explosive helium gas instead of relying on a steady flow of water.
The technology behind the new reactors has been known for a while. Called the pebble-bed reactor approach it was experimented with by Germany, South Africa and the United States but was not developed. It was a costly machine. However, there is virtual consensus among nuclear experts that the technology works better than the conventional one and produces more manageable waste. The spent balls are considerably less radio-active than the rods and can be disposed off in the sites near the plants. The experiments outside China were not continued since the private sector was not prepared to outlay a large amount of capital that may ultimately not yield economic results. Financially rich China has taken care of this problem by coming in with massive support. The government has paid for the entire research and development bill and will pay an additional 30 per cent as subsidy for the capital cost of building the plants.
China now has the world’s largest nuclear reactor building plans in the world. As many as 50 new reactors will be built, mostly of the conventional design. But if the pebble-bed approach works a larger proportion of the plants will be of the new variety. Western opinion about the Chinese approach is generally positive.
“China epitomises the stark choices that we face globally in moving away from current forms of coal-based electricity”, says Jonathan Sinton, the top China specialist at the International Energy Agency in Paris. “Nuclear is an essential alternative to coal. It’s the only one that can provide the same quality of electricity at a similar scale in the medium and long-term”.
While locating the new plants the Chinese are being cautious, having fully imbibed the lessons from the Three Mile and Fukushima accidents. The authorities have ordered that all nuclear plants be located at least 50 kilometers from the nearest city. Chinese nuclear safety agency met after the incident in Japan and reviewed the Shidao plant design as well as its siting. They have given the goahead for construction work to proceed.
Since one is not privy to the on-going discussions between China and Pakistan on the nature of the former’s promised assistance to the latter, it would be prudent for Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Commission to look again and with considerable care at the programme of Chinese assistance.
It would be wise to include one of the pebble-bed reactors among those headed eventually Pakistan’s way. Joining the Chinese even at the experimental stage of the development of this breed of reactors would help the Pakistani engineers and scientists to gain enormous valuable experience.