Malaysia is left with no option but push nuclear power

Yes they have more hydro projects on stream but there’s no way that hydro power will catapult the demand for more gas and coal, says the Malaysian government.

“We predominantly rely 46% in gas,44% in coal and remaining in hydro and other renewable shares are bit of pieces. When we look at our own refinement, our use of gas and energy is depleting as a way of our demand, very soon we will now see our demand outstripping supply,” Dato’ Sri idris Jala, minister in Prime Minister’s Office and chief executive officer of PEMANDU said during the Singapore International Energy Week.

Citing a study by the World Energy, he adds “Post 2017-2020, the demand in South East Asia will outstrip the supply, and gas will be short in that worth in something to the tune of around 10.7 billion of gas per day.”

So that’s a very big chunk, according to him that would make policy makers think on what would be the energy mix to put in the table and that does not exclude nuclear power in the equation.

“Conventionally, you will look for fossil fuel and a lot of countries are putting vests. In Malaysia we are building a small terminal in offshore Malacca that will take in initially 3.8 million tons of gas per annum. This is also something that Singapore is starting of I think around 3 million tons and Thailand is pretty much doing the same while Indonesia have 6 or 8 million tons per annum. So everyone is building capacity to import gas because of the abundance of gas outside our shores,” Mr. Jala notes.

“We have look at opportunities where to put coal in to this and long as coal prices is effective enough to us, we will continue to depend on coal as part of the energy mix. Hydro’s significance is increasing particularly in volume and a lot of hydro projects are going on stream but there’s no way that hydro will catapult the demand for more gas and coal. In the long-term, we cannot reject the possibility of looking at nuclear. I know that there are various issues on the Fukushima story but I think the world will not have major reaction for us in doing this,” he adds.

According to Mr. Jala, securing energy supply is critical for Malaysia as it aims to transform its enonomy from a middle-income to a high-income state by 2020.

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Tags: malaysia nuclear power, Asia nuclear power