Is 1Malaysia capable of Handling?

It has been months since the debate on nuclear power in Malaysia started and it will be ongoing until, the government makes the decision. One of the questioned issues is, are we Malaysians capable of handling such technology which, to most people is illustrated as AMD-Advanced, Modern and Dangerous.

Let's get started with the first term - advanced. I believe every single educated Malaysians should and do know about our so called "Wawasan 2020" or also known as Vision 2020. Allow me to enlighten you that the main objective of this Vision is that by year 2020, Malaysia will be a fully developed nation as in economically, politically, socially and etc. If that is the case, wouldn't the current "advanced" becomes "moderate" or something that is not too advance by that time? Since we are still in the midst of rapid development, why couldn't we put some faith in ourselves and our young generations? In fact, we do not need to come out with the technology itself, we will only be user and operator should the Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) is given a nod.

For most people who do not know much about nuclear or in general about something, that something will be assumed to be new or in other word "modern". Truth is nuclear energy has such a long history dating back to early 40s when the World's first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile 1(CP1) achieved criticality. Over years of rapid development and research, it is not exaggerating to say that nuclear technology today is trustworthy and safe! Of course, accidents did occur in the past; the two major ones are the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Leaving the two out of discussions, others are basically small accidents that occur even in conventional power plant.

There's a chinese saying that sounds "opportunity comes with danger". Only in danger, comes opportunities and on the other hand, taking the opportunities at times are dangerous too. What if our leaders back in the 50s did not take the risk to fight for independance, will there be a Malaysia as she is today? Of course we are not talking about bold courage, taking risk without considering here. As a Introduction to Nuclear Technology student in UNITEN myself, I was amazed by all the safety standards and means taken in all kind of NPPs that were exposed to me throughout the course. I can assure that, the NPP designers are extremely particular of the safety aspect after I studied through their designs and throughout these years, through the major accidents that occured, they keep on improvising the design from time to time to be "fashionable" and up to date. Furthermore, even if NPP is given the approval stamp, it will be another decade before we see a NPP up and running. Just a reminder, 2012 is 2 years away, worry about it first! =)

Finally, I would like to stress that, of course we are capable of handling this, once we get the AMD mindset mutated. Before I end, I would like to borrow my fellow coursemates' slogan:

MALAYSIA BOLEH! 1MALAYSIA, 1NUCLEAR! Give it 1TRY!