The topic is wide and in next 500 words I can not cover the positives and negatives of Modern vs. Traditional ways of engineering. The idea of writing this blog came from my continuous follow up with the Japan’s recent 9 Richter scale tremor followed by the dangerous Tsunami claiming thousand of life in the country, and the failure and explosion in the modern engineering Nuclear Reactors.Nuclear Reactors are established in Japan to generate energy, Electric Energy. Japan was one of the pioneers in setting up these reactors and using them with high efficiency. Nuclear reactors are actually one of the modern ways for generating electricity, and the older is Coal Plants which is still in use. The cost of setting up a Nuclear Reactor over Coal Plants is way high, at the same time it demands high quality in process and people.
After the melt-down of couple of Nuclear Reactor resulting leakage of radiation in Japan a huge outcry is noticed around the world especially in the developed country to shutdown their Nuclear Reactors of the good of people. These outbreaks are the result of the emotional decision making of the people. Electricity is very important in our day to day life and if the most modern way of engineering is refused by the world we have the option of going back to Coal Plants and Energy from the other fossil fuels. One more alternate ways will be to develop the renewable source of energy like Wind Mills, Solar Energy and Water Energy (Dams) but cost implication is again huge and with many limitation. We can not overlook these natural sources of energy however we are still under development phase, and it’s very difficult to adopt these ways of energy generation as the supply of the capital equipments for renewable power generation is very less. I know about the supply as I am closely working with one of my client who is the biggest exporter of Solar Panels from India, and ask me how we are managing their supply chain. Costs of these panels are very high so they keep controlling the cost at supply chain, and demand is huge causing the restless work environment inside the office and factory.
So, I am going to consider Coal Plant (Traditional) vs Nuclear Reactor (Modern). The point is can we go back to Coal Energy because of the people’s outcry over the world? And my answer will be logically “NO”.
Nuclear power is one of the most efficient way to generate the energy vis-a-via Coal Power. Despite of high capital and operational cost, per unit cost of the energy remain very less in Nuclear Power. I agree that we have seen few instances where Nuclear reactors has put the life of people in danger, however if we see the long term effect of Nuclear energy on people, it is much safer then Coal or compared to any other fossil fuel energy. Burning of coal emits many GHG (Green House Gases) contributing hugely to the global-warming resulting many catastrophic issues. Also procuring Coal is a dangerous process with thousands of people’s life in stake, also mining cost, transportation cost, manpower cost, environment implication and many more. Though the similar process is also used to procure Uranium (mining, conversion, enrichment to the correct uranium, and transportation) however the final cost-benefit analysis rates Nuclear Power generation way ahead than Coal Power.
It’s pretty understood that Nuclear Reactors come with many perils but we have to consider all those risk areas, and ensure that we have every solution ready if any such incident happens. If we take the example to Japan, Japan is a seismic zone and they were pretty much ready to handle any earthquake related problem, however they were not much prepared for tsunami danger.
This is big learning for the world, they should learn from what has happened in Japan. Japan one of the most technology driven country with all the process followed with almost 100% compliance, if that can happen with them it can happen anywhere. We just have to be prepared.
For all the developing countries energy is the biggest challenge, India and China is already looking Nuclear power as one of the ways to keep their momentum up and running. We should take many learning from Japan Nuclear Reactor meltdown, and ensure that we handle the upcoming perils very sensitively.
And as the Picture shows, Pound for pound Uranium provided 16000 time more Electricity than Coal !!! (Source: http://newenergyandfuel.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Uranium-vs-Carbon-Poster.jpg)
Shivendra Singh
Mar 22, 2011
