From: abasu@IASTATE.EDU (Anujit Basu)
Subject: Re: Indonesian version of nuclear power plants
Reply-To: abasu@IASTATE.EDU (Anujit Basu)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 04:04:34 GMT

In article <1992Dec28.010525.11743@random.ccs.northeastern.edu>,
okidz@ccs.northeastern.edu (Oki D Zakaria) writes:
> 
> Indonesia will build a nuclear power plant beginning 1997. The plant is
> planned to operate sometime in 2003, and it will generate 600 MW of electri-
> city. The project's estimated cost is about $1 billion. The location
> of the power plant is to be in Central Java, near Mount Muria.
> 
> I don't understand why Indonesian gov't chose Mount Muria as the site
> of the nuclear power plant. Thinking about radioactive leakage, actually
> there are many islands with no people in Indonesia. Why doesn't the gov't 
> choose any of them and build the power plant there? Should there be any 
> problems with the radioactive water, it wouldn't hurt any people. Of course, 
> there would be an additional cost for the transmission lines for delivering 
> the electricity to the main islands.
> 
> All I know about nuclear power plants is that they need water for 'capturing'
> the heat generated by the nuclear core (or whatever it's called), and later,
> this water is circulated to heat some other water to turn it into steam.
> There's a lot of water involved, and water leaks easily. The chosen site
> near the Mount Muria (we can assume that it's a quite high place) will
> be an ideal factor for promoting the propagation of the contaminated water 
> (if there's any leakage).  
> 

A nuclear power plant produces heat in its 'core' by way of nuclear reactions.
This heat is carried away from the core by water. Now, there are two kinds of
reactors. In one, this water is allowed to boil and the water gets converted to
steam which then drives the turbine to generate electricity. The used steam is
condensed and recirculated through the core. This type of a reactor is called
the Boiling Water Reactor (BWR). On the other hand, there is what is called the
Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR). In a PWR, the water flowing through the core is
maintained at a very high pressure so that it does not boil. The super-heated
water is then passed through a steam-generator where heat is transferred to a
secondary loop. The water in the secondary loop boils, turns to steam and drives
the turbine. In any case, the water flowing through the core picks up a
significant ammount of radioactivity. But all the systems of a nuclear power
plant subject to radioactivity are enclosed in what is called the primary
containment. This containment is designed to hold any radiocative water that may
leak out due to a rupture in the piping of the plant. The plants are actually
designed for accidents far worse than the bursting of a few pipes. The altitude
of a plant site, the gradient of its surroundings etc are of no consequence.
What is important is that the design of the plant structures, containment etc
are sound. Also the site should not be highly earthquake prone.


> Does any of you have any idea why the power plant will be built near Mount
> Muria? The gov't said that lots of the funds would be allocated for buying
> safety equipment, it's good to hear that, but all I can see is that there
> are many people who will be affected by any failures in the power plant.
> Central Java is quite crowded.        [Stuff deleted.]

I have no idea why this particular site has been chosen for construction.
According to my knowledge, this plant is going to be designed, constructed and
operated by the General Electric Corporation. GE is now trying to contruct new
plants in Asia following the current regulatory environment in the USA. It has
become virtually impossible to construct a new nuclear power plant in the USA.
The deal being worked out with the Indonesian government is innovative. GE will
train the local personnel, operate the plant, and sell the power to the
Indonesian electric utilities for a period of about 20 years. In this time, GE
hopes to recover the constructuon cost of the plant, and make a substantial
profit. After this, the plant will be turned over to the Indonesians to operate
on their own, under their own ownership. A similar kind of deal was attempted in
Turkey, but it fell through as the Turkish government and GE could not agree on
a price for the electric power to be generated. 

> 
> I don't want to say that a nuclear power plant is a bad choice, I just want
> to express my concern about the safety. Aside from that, I have a sense
> that Indonesians are good for building something (provided enough money
> and time) but have no respect to what is called maintenance. In my city where
> I lived, Bandung, the local gov't was fond of planting flowers around the
> city parks. In the beginning, they looked good, but some months after, the
> parks would be like as they had been before. The problems: lack of funds
> for maintaining the flowers. Sure, power plants are not the same with 
> 'flower plants', but generally, I believe that the people are the same.
> 
> If any of you are familiar with nuclear power plants, I'll be glad to hear
> what are the dangers 'embedded' in such plants and what precautions can be
> taken to prevent them to occur.
> 
Well, the plants to be constructed in Indonesia and elsewhere by GE are going to
be substantially different from the plants currently in operation in the USA.
They are going to be "inherently safe" by design. GE loves to say that if an
operator detects that there is something seriously wrong with the plant, he can
still go home, have dinner, watch TV, go to bed, wake up the next morning, come
to the plant as usual and then start thinking about what needs to be done. The
new designs will automatically shut a reactor down in case of a malfunction and
will use common physics (gravity, density of water, etc.) to maintain cooling of
the core thus giving the operators about 72 hours to react! In the present
reactors, this is on the order of a few minutes to an hour.

Anyway, do you know that the probability of a major radiological disaster from
one of these plants is smaller than the probability of your crossing the street
in front of your house safely.

I think that this power plant will place Indonesia in a very advantageous
position as far as reaping the benifits of improved designs is concerned. The
first plant using some of these new design ideas is already being built in Japan
by GE and Hitachi (or maybe Toshiba, I'm not sure). These plants will have a
standard design, and so maintainance will not be difficult. Moreover,
maintainance will be the responsibility of GE and so will be done effectively.
By the time the plant is handed over to the Indonesians, they would hopefully
have learnt the value of proper maintainance. And the purpose of standardized
designs is that a large number of plants be built; and if I am not mistaken, GE
is planning to start constructing somewhere between 6 to 12 plants in Indonesia
alone. 

> 
> 
> Oki
> okidz@ccs.northeastern.edu
> 

Anujit Basu
abasu@iastate.edu