With the rapid development of the countries in the world, the demand for energy also growing every second. Currently the countries in the world are using both renewable and non-renewable energy such as coal, petroleum, fossil fuel, wind turbines, biomass, geothermal energy and hydroelectric energy. Most of these energies are non-renewable and almost run out. Most of the countries in the world especially the government are working on this problem and trying to search for an alternative way to replace all of these energies with something better such as energy that is renewable and doesn’t harm the environment around us. It is not an exception for Malaysia where our country is also running out of energy sources and the government are trying to find the best replacement to the energy that we are using today. There are two types of radiation energy that are still in research whether these energies are suitable to be used or not. These two energies are solar energy and nuclear energy. This case study will discuss more about the benefits and issues related to solar energy and nuclear energy. Why is this topic being so important to be discussed or to be investigate? This is because the purpose of the study is to examine and determine which one of the energy is the best replacement to the energy that are currently in use and to determine the most suitable energy as the main source of energy in the world. This topic is important to investigate because it will help to save our future and it helps us to create a suitable environment for the next generation and this will expose the public to know more about solar energy and nuclear energy where these energies have the potential to be the main source of energy of the world in the future. This topic is not only important to be discuss but it is also an interesting topic as it can help to increase our knowledge and it also helps to change our perspective about solar energy and nuclear energy.
Before we dive more into the topic, we should know the history about solar energy and nuclear energy. We have to know what radiation energy is? What do we know about solar energy and nuclear energy? Radiation energy is defined as the transmission or emission of energy through space or some material in the form of wave. This radiation spreads out from the source in all directions and "radiates" out. Meanwhile solar energy is the energy obtained from the radiation of the sunlight. Solar energy is capable in producing heat energy and can be transform into electrical energy. Solar energy was first discovered during the 700 BC where humans during that time figured how to lit up the fire by focusing the sunlight using the magnifying glass to the object that can be burned such as dried leaves. Few hundred years later, there are different people from all over the world such as the Romans, Greeks and the Chinese started to use reflective things such as mirror during religious ceremonies to light up the fire. Even in 212 until 214 BC many historians claimed that Archimedes destroyed the Romans navy during the Siege of Syracuse using the sunlight. He used a collection of mirrors and focused the sunlight to the ships and set the Romans’ ship on fire. Solar energy is continued to be used throughout the years until now. In 1767, the first solar oven was created and it was used to heat meals and drinks during those time and the man behind this invention is known as Horace de Saussure which is also a Swiss born physicist. Sir John Herschel is an astronomer also created a hot box which is similar to the solar oven during his expedition to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. The effect of photovoltaic was discovered during the year of 1839 where Edmund Becquerel who is a French physicist that voltage can be created when a material is being exposed to the sunlight and he was only 19 years old at that very moment. In 1873 photoconductivity in Selenium was discovered by an English engineer, Willoughby Smith. 1876 marked as the year where electricity was produces from the sunlight and the first of photovoltaic cell was discovered in 1883. There are more to the history of solar energy where Albert Einstein discovered the photoelectric effect where he formulated the photon theory of light in 1905, in 1918 a polish scientist, Jan Czochralski found the way on how to grow a single – crystal silicon and the birth of photovoltaics in 1954 thanks to David Chapin, Calvin Fuller and Gerald Pearson from Bell Labs where they successfully created a device where it can turn sunlight into an electrical energy. Starting from this point onwards solar energy is getting more well-known and being improvised suitable with the transformation of the world.
What about nuclear energy? Nuclear energy is the energy in the nucleus of an atom. Nuclear energy is the energy that holds neutrons and protons together in an atom. Nuclear energy also can be used as an electrical energy. As for nuclear energy the history started when fission was first discovered. What is fission? Fission is a process when an atom is being split into two parts. During this process heat energy will be released and the heat that is being released can be used to generate electricity in the powerplants. Fission was found in 1934 by Enrico Fermi, a physicist who conducted an experiments that resulted him to find that neutrons can split any kinds of an atom. He did not get the element that he expected during the experiment where he bombarded uranium with neutrons, instead he got an element that were way more lighter than the uranium. In 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, German scientists, conducted an experiment where they shot neutrons from the elements radium and beryllium into uranium and they got the same result as Enrico Fermi where the element that form from the experiment is way more lighter than uranium such as barium. They contacted their colleague from Copenhagen, Lise Meitner who worked with Niels Bohr and Otto R. Frisch. Lise Meitner used the theory where the loss of mass of the uranium was changed into energy and it proved that fission occurred and at once it confirmed Einstein’s work. A series of fission is called as chain reaction. As an example, if uranium is gathered together under the proper conditions then the continuous chain reaction will occurred and this is known as self-sustaining chain reaction. Self – sustaining chain reaction will produced a great amount of heat that can be used to help to generate the electricity. Electricity that was generated using the nuclear energy will be generated in the nuclear powerplant just like the other steam – electric powerplant. Self – sustaining chain reaction was discovered when Bohr went to America in 1939 to share the Hahn-Strassman-Meitner discoveries with Einstein and he also went to Fermi’s theoretical physics conference in Washington D.C and discussed about the possibility of self – sustaining chain reaction. Starting from this point, scientists all over the world started to believe that self – sustaining chain reaction is possible if the reaction obeys all the conditions that allow self – sustaining chain reaction to occur. Early of the year 1942, Fermi was leading a group of scientists at the University of Chicago to develop their very own theories and by the end of November 1942, they were ready to construct the world’s first nuclear reactor that is very well-known as Chicago Pile-. The project was conducted on the squash court beneath the athletic stadium of University of Chicago at that time. Morning on December 2, 1942 scientists were ready to demonstrate the self – sustaining chain reaction and finally at 3:25 pm which is several hours after the demonstration started, the nuclear reaction became self – sustaining and the world had entered a new era where nuclear energy is involved. The first nuclear reactor that was created was only the beginning and more technology involving nuclear energy was developed during that time and one of them was developed a technology that can be used as an effective weapon for World War II. By the end of 1991, there are 31 countries in the world had a nuclear powerplants that are under construction in each country. However, nuclear energy produced a lot of waste and the engineers during that time was instructed to create a new technology that can managed the waste from nuclear energy. Nuclear energy was found during the 40’s and continued being experimented and a lot of research were done on this specific energy from the 40’s until now.
The problem statement for this case study are also provided for each energy. The problem statement for solar energy is where people thought that solar energy is very safe but their thoughts are very wrong because solar energy can be very dangerous. Los Angeles 2011, the solar energy grew for 67 percent in the United States which meant that more people are using solar panel as the main source of energy in their house. However, the accidents that happened related to this solar panel are heart breaking where people that was responsible to install the solar panel died while doing their job. Falling from a high place, got electrocuted and the thing that feared most of people are when the solar panel that was installed at their home was caught in flame. There are few reasons as to how the solar panel can caught on fire. Meanwhile in Malaysia the number of people that uses solar energy are relatively low because of the high initial costs and the government did not provided any financial support to those who wants to use solar energy as the main source of energy. Other than that, most of the house specifically the rooftop in Malaysia are not built to install the solar panel but they are still people that can effort installing the solar panel at their house. Meanwhile the problem statement for nuclear energy is as we know that the world today, not only Malaysia are running out of energy sources and they are turning to nuclear energy as a replacement. Even though nuclear energy has been proven to be a clean and safe energy, there are still some people out there thinking that nuclear energy or nuclear powerplants are dangerous to everyone and environment. Peoples’ perception towards nuclear energy are being influenced by the nuclear accidents that happened in the past such as Three Miles Island in United State of America in late of 1970s and the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine in 1986. Nuclear energy also produce a lot of waste that are contaminated and can cause radiation which can harm the environment if it’s not being handled carefully. This case study will examine and discuss about the benefits of solar energy and nuclear energy and will be discussing the issues related to these energies in Malaysia and outside of Malaysia and at the same time educate a lot of people out there about solar energy and nuclear energy.
Literature review
The Malaysian government is not an exception when it comes to being criticized from the public for proposing the idea to build a nuclear powerplant in the country. In this literature review we are going to review few research and reports done by other researcher about nuclear energy.
As we all know nuclear energy is a new version of energy and has never been used in Malaysia because of few reasons. The public doesn’t have any deep understanding when it comes to nuclear energy benefits and most of the people only know about the incidents related to nuclear energy and this installed the fear of nuclear energy. Based on the research made by William A. Gamson from Boston College and Andre Modigliani from University of Michigan, they said in their research that people often look past the advantages and benefits of nuclear energy because of the fear these people have.
Resistance to nuclear energy development is the latest version of this irrational fear of progress and change, the expression of modern pastoralists and nuclear Luddites.
(Gamson and Modigliani, 1989)
Based on the above, the fear and the public’s acceptance of nuclear energy has been going for so long. This is the common issue when it comes to nuclear energy or nuclear power. The doubts that the public have for nuclear energy is a big challenge for any country that wants to use nuclear energy as the main source of the energy. According to Gamson and Modigliani that for every problems they must have a solution. Same goes to nuclear energy, they added that nuclear energy may not be free from any problems but technology can be created to solve any issues and problems regarding nuclear energy.
Apart from the fact that the public is still scared of the risk that comes with nuclear energy, in Malaysia Dr. Azmi Hassan through Utusan Online has said that Malaysians may be in shock when the National Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) gives a permission for the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water to take the first step to build the nuclear energy plant. This is because Malaysia is not known as the country that have the technology related to nuclear and Malaysia is not actively involved in nuclear energy. Dr. Azmi Hassan added that compared to the other ASEAN country, Malaysia is left far behind in terms of nuclear development programme for electricity. About three decades ago, Malaysia has started to involve in nuclear development programme for electricity but the project stop because at that time the price for oil is still cheap. If the programme is continued Malaysia would already have a nuclear powerplant that can generate the electricity for the country and save a lot of electricity cost.
However, it is believe that the public’s opinion and acceptance of nuclear power are important so that nuclear power can be used as main source of energy and replace the fossil fuel, charcoal or the oil that has been used for a very long time despite all the negative effect and all the pollution it has to the environment. The full involvement of the public are needed so nuclear power can be considered as a safe and clean energy to the public and to the environment.
When it comes to solar energy, Malaysia is very suitable for this kind of energy as Malaysia received a large amount of sunlight throughout the year. The public acceptance to this energy is less critical compared to the nuclear energy as solar energy did not have any big significance accidents that can make people doubting the energy.
The results showed that the majority of Malaysians are concerned about climate change and have heard about renewable energy. (Renewable Energy)
Based on above, it show that majority of the public can accept the use of the solar energy in everyday life but they are concerned about the climate change. In another research by M. R. Islam, R, Saidur, N. A. Rahim, and K. H. Solangi stated that most of the solar power that are being used in Malaysia is only on domestic level a large scale of solar power is not yet significant. Adding another reason why solar energy are not really a big thing in Malaysia even though the public has nothing much against it is because the fact that solar radiation in each area in Malaysia has a different level.
According to a research by Christopher The Boon Sung, the solar radiation decrease from the northern states to the southern states. States such as Kedah, Kelantan, Sabah and Penang receive the most solar radiation meanwhile the southern states like Johor and Sarawak receive the least solar radiation. This can be a problem for the southern states if solar power is going to be the main source of energy in Malaysia. Apart from that, there are also few solar related companies in Malaysia and these companies should work together and convince the public about the benefits of solar energy.
Even though there are so many benefits that nuclear energy and solar energy brings, there are also issues that comes with it. Nuclear energy and solar energy is not a free from problems energy because both of this energy is a high risk energy especially when it comes to nuclear energy. The issues taken regarding solar energy and nuclear energy are both taken from the issues in Malaysia and outside of Malaysia.
As we all know that main source of energy in Malaysia is coming from fossil fuel and charcoal. Both of this energy is a non-renewable energy and can be running out of sources anytime from now. Can you imagine Malaysia without any source of energy? How chaos the country can be? This is why the government are trying to find the alternative way to tackle this issue. Few years back, the government started to expose the people to few energy that could be the replacement to the fossil fuel and charcoal. The energy that could be the replacement are nuclear energy and solar energy but there are also issues in Malaysia and around the world related to these energies. The issues related to nuclear and solar energy will be discussed and examined in details.
As for nuclear energy, there are way more issues related to this energy than solar energy. The first popular issue about nuclear energy is about people perception about nuclear energy. Just like it was stated in the problem statement, most of people’s perspective about nuclear energy were influenced by the nuclear accidents such as Three Miles Island and Chernobyl disasters. Based on these accidents, most of people not just in Malaysia but people around the world are afraid that the history will repeat itself if any nuclear powerplants were built near to their house. Take on Chernobyl’s disaster as an example where the accidents is the world’s worst nuclear explosion that have ever happened and it gave off a lot of negative affect the people and the environment where the rate of radiation at that particular place are very high until now. We can’t help the fact that people are very scared of nuclear energy and most of them rejected the idea to use the nuclear energy as the main source of energy in the world despite of all the benefits nuclear energy have.
Picture 1: Chernobyl’s Nuclear Powerplant after the massive explosion.
Picture 2: Three Miles Island Nuclear Powerplant.
Other than that, most people did not want to take the risk not just because of the well – known disasters but also because most of people know that nuclear energy can also be used as a weapon and that point the seed of fear is stronger than ever in everyone’s mind. They know how dangerous and fatal a nuclear weapon can be. As an example, during the final stage of World War II, the United States dropped two nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that caused the death of millions of people. Most people nowadays learned about history and they said we need to learn from the history and that is the main reason why most people rejected the idea of nuclear energy. The peoples’ perspective can be quite challenging to change as someone can be very firm with their own opinion.
Another issue related to nuclear energy is the fact that nuclear energy produces contaminated waste that can that affect a lot of things. The waste are usually has a high radioactive and can cause harm to all the things surrounding it. There are three levels of nuclear waste, they are high – level waste, intermediate – level waste and the last one is low – level waste. All these three levels of waste has their very own radioactive level that can bring harmful effect to the environment if it is not manage properly and carefully. The low – level waste usually related to tools and cloth that are used in the powerplant during any operation and the percentage of radioactive for this level of waste is usually only one percent and it is very low. The intermediate – level waste usually have four percent of radioactive which is still not so high but for the high – level waste, it has ninety – five percent of radioactive which is very high and can be dangerous if it is not being managed properly. This is also one of the issues in Malaysia where Prof. Ramesh Thakur according to the star newspaper, rejected the idea of building nuclear powerplant in Malaysia and the most dangerous thing is there are no permanent where to dispose the waste of nuclear energy as it remains radioactive for so many years. The prove is when a German environmental research group criticising Australian Rare Earth mining company, Lynas Corporation for not managing radioactive waste properly in Malaysia. In the report stated that the site of the mining lacks of a long – term disposal of radioactive under an acceptable condition. According to the Waste Manage World website the effect on the environment can be seen when all the toxic and radioactive waste can pollute the groundwater at once can harm people in Kuantan where it all happened.
Other issues related to nuclear energy is recent controversies where it involved the nuclear weapon. The most popular country when it comes to nuclear weapon is no other than North Korea. Practically everyone knows that North Korea has been constructing nuclear weapon and has been testing it somewhere. Moreover the conflict between the United State of America and North Korea has been going on for quite a while and with the North Korea testing their very own nuclear weapon it has been worrying the world community. This is also an issue where peoples’ are worried that nuclear energy may be used for wrong intentions and bring harms to a lot of innocent world. The controversies that’s going around is the issues and problems why most of people seems to reject the idea of nuclear energy as the main source of energy even though nuclear energy has a lot of benefits and can be used safely if it is manage properly.
For solar energy, it has been a public knowledge that on 23rd October 2008 the Malaysian government is a full member of the International Energy Agency Photovoltaic Power System Program (IEAPVPS). Based on the name of the program we will know that Malaysia has been involved with solar energy for quite a long time now but still there are some people out there are not aware about the benefits of solar energy. According to the conference paper by K.H Solangi, R. Saidur, N.A Rahim, M.R Islam and H. Fayaz the rise of the photovoltaic industry in Malaysia is because of First Solar Inc., Q – Cells AG, SunPower Corporations and Tokuyama Corporation, where all of these international companies is a photovoltaic manufacturer in Malaysia. Starting from this point solar energy or photovoltaic industry started to gain attention and significance among the people in Malaysia. However, the number of people using solar energy or involved in photovoltaic are still low because of few limitations and barriers.
The common issues related to the solar energy in Malaysia is the initial cost. In Malaysia if somebody wants to install a solar panel at their home, they have to prepare a large sum of money because the initial cost of solar panel can reach at least 10 thousand ringgit. Most people are having trouble with the amount of money needed for someone to actually have a solar panel at their home. Other than that, the government did not provide any financial support specifically for people that wants to install the solar panel at their home. As an example, based on the multiple sources in the internet, Japan is the most leading country in the world when it comes to solar energy. This is because the Japanese government do provide financial support by giving subsidy to every house that installed a solar panel at their house. This action is due to the fact that the Japanese government really wanted to promote and expose their people to the solar energy or generally to the new renewable energy so that the billing cost, potential pollution and running out of energy sources can be avoided.
Besides from the initial cost issue, the people in Malaysia were not properly exposed to the benefits of solar energy. This is proven true when most of the houses in Malaysia did not have any solar panel at their house. The least that we can see is the government is using solar panel for the street lamp but it is only available in Kuala Lumpur and no other places. Even on the social media, the people did not try to convince or trying to expose the benefits of solar energy to others. It is a very rare sight to see someone or people in Malaysia to talk about the benefits of solar energy as they are not aware of it and they are not properly expose to it. The government did not take any initiatives to tell the people how solar energy can be a good affect in our life. Aside from reducing the billing cost, solar energy also is involved in a very low potentially pollution and the most important thing is solar energy is renewable which mean that it will never run out. Young generation may know a lot about solar energy but they did not have the money or simply they can’t effort to install the solar energy in their own house. As for the older generation, most of them are not using social media and the only reasons they have cell phone is for them to make any call or send any text messages. The older generation is the one that may can effort to install the solar panel but the only thing that’s holding back is how they did not know the benefits that solar energy can bring to one’s home. It is such a shame because solar energy has a lot of benefits and no one tried to expose it.
Other than that, the limitation and issues regarding solar energy in Malaysia is, if solar energy were to be used as the main source of energy in the country, it needed a big space to install all the solar panel. However, the issue is in Malaysia there are no suitable place to install the solar panel as the surface of most places in Malaysia are not flat because most of the places are full of hills. To flattened this hills is wrong because it will cause more pollution to the environment just because we want to install the solar panel where it has low pollution. There are already enough of construction companies out there that caused a lot of pollution because they want to build something on the hill and the most dangerous thing is it can causes landslide.
As for the issues around the world particularly in India where most of the rural areas did not get any electricity, the government are trying to solve the issues by providing the solar panel for everyone that did not get any electricity at their home. However, the issue is even during the day the India’s weather can be cloudy and raining which cause the solar panel doesn’t get enough sunlight to turn it into electricity. Only those areas with good weather that receive the sunlight for a long time can use the solar panel. Facing the same issue just like in Malaysia is they needed quite a large space to build the solar panel but most of the space in the rural areas are occupied that the government did not have any choices but to install the solar panel in each home. There are other issues when the solar panels are install at each of the house. According to the Hans India News while installing the solar panels are rather cheap but installing other equipment are so expensive and solar panels are quite fragile and can be easily damaged so the additional cost for insurance are also needed.
Based on the issues and problems related to solar energy and nuclear energy that was stated, there are also solution that has been found for each conflict. There are so many great engineers, scientists, physicists and even the government and other people that are an expert in solar energy and nuclear energy that can help and solve all of the issues and problems related to these energies.
Nuclear energy is an energy that is closely related to the safety. The first issue about nuclear energy is about the public’s perception about nuclear energy. The public’s perception is related to all the fatal accidents related to nuclear energy. This issue is quite a challenging issue to tackle. The responsible party especially the government needs to work hard to change the public’s perception towards the nuclear energy and convince them that nuclear energy in this ere is way more safe than the before. The public needed to be exposed about the fact how these fatal accidents happened and how it actually can be avoided from happening again. From this action, we can actually make the public to trust nuclear energy to be the main source of energy in the future. The government needs to tackle this issue in stages so that in can successfully implemented in everyone without taking any consideration about the age as everyone needed to be exposed about how clean and safe nuclear energy is. Nuclear energy is one of the energy with biggest risks and a lot of people is worried and scared so this is also one of the reasons why the government especially needs to convince the public that nuclear energy is actually safe to be used as the main source of energy.
Other than the public’s perception about nuclear energy, the waste that nuclear energy produces also is one of the biggest issue of all time. This is because there no proper ways yet that can be used to dispose nuclear waste permanently. The waste from nuclear energy is very high in radioactive and can kill someone within the next few days if the radiation is too high and if that person is not taking security measures seriously. There are ways that can be done to dispose nuclear waste but the waste is not being disposed permanently which means that it will have stay as a radioactive materials for thousands of year and it will causes harms to the public and even the environment. This is a very serious issue and the responsible party needs to take this seriously and started to take an action to avoid this issue from continuously harming the public’s life and our environment because it can destroy the future of the world and even destroy the future and home for the generations.
The solution for the third issue about the nuclear weapon controversies is any government that has the nuclear power should be careful with their words. This is because the public will easily feel scared and threatened as something that related to the nuclear power or nuclear energy is a serious thing and not something that we can make joke with. Any statements that the government released regarding to nuclear energy should be taken into a strict consideration and the words must be chosen carefully to avoid any misunderstand to the public.
Meanwhile for the solution for the initial cots regarding the solar panel is the government could provide financial support or subsidy for every house that has solar panel. Based on the Berita Harian Online, on 20 November 2017, the government stated that they are still discussing about the solar panel’s price and the government may decrease the price of the solar panel to lift the burden of the cost that the public must face if they want to install solar panels at their house. According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in