Nadia Aaron asked...

Where is it going to be build in Malaysia?

If our neighbouring countries had a NPP reactor blow, will the radiation reach us?

Where to build? Borneo (Sabah or Sarawak)... Not a chance. There's already BAKUN over there to supply electricity. Well not yet but sooner. Ok, suppose our NPP is built in Borneo, how are we supposed to send the electricity to the peninsular where the demand is at peak? Transmission cables ya... Distance more than 1000km so we should use underwater sea cable. Can you imagine how much power loss will occur within 1000km cable? Suppose we increase the power. P=VI. Increase voltage? Not a chance. If there's a leakage then imagine 1000V or more in water. Increase current. Possible but high current flow would produce a strong electromagnetic field around it which could damage the eco system. Perhaps my colleague taking EE could explain more on this as it is neither my expertise nor preferences. It is actually not possible to do such a thing for now. Even if we manage it, the cost will be too high hence leaded to loss rather than profit. Profit (loss) = Total Revenue - Total Cost. I actually heard rumours saying we already have a spot for our NPP. It should be near the sea for the cooling loop system and easy transportation. Not around north east coast (Kelantan, Pahang, Johor, Terengganu) as it will be too "exposed". So the nominations are Penang,kedah, Perlis, Selangor, Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka, and Johor. Owh ya Penang, Kedah and Perlis have a Tsunami history and hence can be excluded. Melaka also as its sea shore are too dense. I think the rumours stated Negeri Sembilan.

Radiation could actually be transferred in almost every possible way you could think of. It only depends on its intensity, shielding, and distance. Chernobyl incident occur in Ukraine, Europe. In several days, the United States of America detected that the radiation reached them followed by Japan. That’s just a simple indication on how far and how fast it can spread. It actually depends on the source radiation intensity where the intensity decreases as distance increase. We are talking about Indonesia and Thailand.

Thank you for your question. A good one actually. Thanks for everyone who had been reading this blog. Thank you all for your precious comments. We do appreciate it but please read through all article posted in this blog before asking as some questions were asked repeatedly. I know it’s kind of boring but that’s why I said just read through or even glance through . Thank you.

Topic for 14th October

How am I suppose to expect readers to get excited with my posts if even myself thinks it's boring. Never mind, people differs in taste and preferences.

Thoughts for the day

We live in a world full of lies. Great people are the ones who can tell lies yet no one can deny. The greatest people are those who can tell lies, not only you can’t deny it but you agrees with it. You can meet most of these great people in the political and business world.

Some example is that how you felt safe when boarding an airplane or when you drive a Volvo or how you felt secure saving your money in a bank.

The truth is that there is nothing in this world that you could say 100% safe yet you choose to be deceived in order to live or otherwise you’ll live in paranoia. The world is harsh. Concluding all the above, Malaysia needs a spokesman… A great one that could deceive us by saying NPP is 100% safe.

Malaysian government concerns about the citizens fear of NPP. Why fear?

Humans by nature fear something that we can’t truly understand, predict, nor control. We don’t fear nuclear power plant (NPP) but its radiation. Why is that? Nuclear scientist and engineers understands about radiation. They also can control and predict it within some limitations so why fear is still creeping? Because it is something that we can’t hear, neither smell, touch, feel, nor see. It’s a mystical killer that we can’t comprehend with.

So if we want to build one, we have to find a way to reduce or even eliminate fear among Malaysians. I suppose that if our government provides each house with a radiometer, then the fear could ease of. With it, people thought that they actually have some senses to detect radioactive. Or even build a 1 meter thick concrete fortress for each residential area in case of a nuclear reactor blows, well that’s paranoid actually. The thing is our neighboring countries (Thailand and Indonesia) are seriously considering having a nuclear power plant (NPP) by 2025. Say the worst that you fear occurs to their NPP, and then we will still be affected by the radiation leak even though we don’t have one.
What we need is some optimistic whereby our leaders can set a good example and influence Malaysians by living in the closest residential area where the NPP is built. If a nation that had been struck by 2 nuclear bombs could still appreciate NPP, then it’s time we learn from them.

All I'm saying is my personal thoughts. No hard feelings.

Topic 13th October 2010

Sorry to consolidate several posts in one go (dated 13^th October) as I will be extremely busy for the week and maybe for the upcoming weeks as well due to my Final Year Project.  It’s been a while since my last post and before this all my post are quite lengthy with some technical information blended together. In fact I hesitate on anyone out there who actually read it. This time I’ll make my posts light and easy. Said that before… As my colleagues had done some interesting job posting pure facts and technical information, today I would post some general issues and nothing much on technical information. (Excuses as to be honest, currently I am lazy to use my brain and hence I wrote down spontaneous thoughts).

Is it myths or fact?

I’ve heard this ever since I was in primary school. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) has the highest rate of staffs diagnosed to have cancer in Malaysia. They believe that it had something to do with Malaysian Institute of Nuclear Technology (MINT) which is located less than 20km away from UKM. If MINT is emitting substantial amount of radioactive, why didn’t their employees suffer the same consequences? Ask staffs in UKM and their answer would be “people working at MINT are equipped with sufficient protective gears to reduce radioactive exposures while UKM staffs have none of these”. It absolutely makes sense.

But remarkably when you look deep into residential area around MINT (Bandar Baru Bangi, Teras Jernang, Bangi Lama,etc), the statement doesn’t make sense. The numbers of people diagnosed with cancer among these permanent residents are significantly low. They don’t have any protective gears or live in a 1 meter concrete fortress. Maybe electronic devices or any equipments or even the soil in UKM is the source of radiation, which is if you insist to put the blame on radiation.

Class on 12th October 2010

Topic covered today was related to nuclear fuel. We were supposed to do some research via internet about why did the price of Uranium dropped significantly around 1970’s but I am lazy to do some research on that so I guess I’ll put it on hold for now. You could read it from my clasmates' blog instead.

As a replacement, I would just like to nag a bit about this whole course. Here I go… A wise man once said that people who had never done any mistakes in their lives are the ones who actually didn’t do anything. The statement is not completely true from my point of view as we can actually learn from others’ mistakes as well. The truth is we do learn best from our own mistakes but unfortunately we don’t live long enough to do all the mistakes and learn from it plus some mistakes cost too much to bare and thus learning from others’ mistakes is the best alternative. Having said this, take Chernobyl incident as an example. It is a devastating event for the nuclear power plant industry and human history. But looking things from another perspective, the incident is a major breakthrough in nuclear power plant studies. Learning from others’ mistakes ya.

If our lecturer takes a week or 2 during lectures, telling the story of this incident in sequence then relate it to the physics in accordance with its sequence, I’m quite sure that most of the students would appreciate or even understand more on balance of reactor, multiplication factor, reactivity (reactivity coefficients, positive and negative feedback), Xenon poisoning, and control rods. Better than teaching some tedious derivation and mathematical formula which I could assure that most of the students won’t use it for the rest of their natural life. Well how much could we actually cope within 4 months right? It’s better to have a few sharp blades rather than having thousands of blunt blades in our kitchen. Meaning that; let’s not focus too much on learning a lot but learn a bit which we can easily explore in depth. The course syllabus and notes were carefully thought out which is why it is very comprehensive, everything is important, but it is futile if students can’t cope up well. Students can’t even answer general questions asked by the public related to NPP. After all it is an introduction class.

Please don’t get me wrong, this is my personal point of view. I did enjoy attending this course. In fact, it is an exciting course that I only went absent once (which is during quiz 4) in the whole semester despite its harsh schedule (6pm to 730pm even during fasting month). Again, for those who are planning to take this course, don’t change your mind after reading this. If the teaching method doesn’t suits me well, it doesn’t mean that it won’t suits you. The lecturers are quite reasonable, flexible, and very open minded. In addition young and talented (Sir please don’t deduct marks sir please…)

Exam on 11th October 2010 Overview

This is my personal experience which I would like to share. On the last Monday, all students taking Introduction to Nuclear Power Plant in UNITEN had to undergo an extremely harsh test. Topic covered consists more than 500 slides. Imagine how harsh it is just to read through and understand that much amount of knowledge. Not to mention that words used in the slides are technical (Nuclear Jargons). We were quite providential though as our lecturers allow us to bring in one personal cheat sheet per test session, which is quite a useful way to “force” students to read almost everything.

That’s not where it ends though; imagine having an hour and a half test, take a break for 30 minutes then continues for another 2 more hours (total duration including 30 minutes break is 4 hours). Gosh the last time I undergo an examination with duration exceeding 3 hours is when I took my Engineering Drawing exam 7 years ago. Imagine 4 hours answering all subjective questions. From studies, basically normal human brains could focus over 90% of its capacity for 2 hours straight and that explains why most classes were scheduled to be less than 2 hours for a subject, final examinations were scheduled to be 2 hour and a half where 30 minutes extra is actually time for you to squeeze out something from your brains and do some checking, a F1 regulations state that a race could only last for 2 hours max (Despite that exceeding 2 hours of race would leave the driver dehydrated and cause internal damages due to the G-forces exerted on them).

How does it feel… For the 1^st session of the exam, everything feels great. Having a cheat sheet in addition with my understandings, answering was a breeze but entering the 2^nd session disaster strikes. My brain refuses to generate the answers even though I actually knew the answer, my fingers starts to hurt and trembling reluctant to write down anything, my eyes starts to haze (or fuzz or dusky or dim or blur or glaze) reluctant to read the questions nor my cheat sheet, my body temperature starts to fluctuate causing perspiration even in cold …. My whole body was against me. Amazingly the questions set up nicely with the time provided.

Ok I think that describes my experience enough. For those who are planning to take this course, don’t change your mind after reading this. The lecturers are quite reasonable and flexible. I’m sure they will improvise their assessment method in the future. Having 50% objective, 20% structural subjective, and 30% essay might be better. This is my personal prospective and doesn’t speak for the team or the class.

Basic of nuclear physics......

History of nuclear physics

So here...I post again about the basic of nuclear physics....hope you guys can understand a little bit of it....like me also...

@ The history of nuclear physics is

*  The discipline distinct from atomic physics starts with the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel in 1896,while investigating phosphorescence in uranium salts. The discovery of the electron by J. J. Thomson a year later was an indication that the atom had internal structure.
*  In 20th century the accepted model of the atom was J. J. Thomson's "plum pudding" model in which the atom was a large positively charged ball with small negatively charged electrons embedded inside of it. By the turn of the century physicists had also discovered three types of radiation coming from atoms, which they named alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. 

@ So,there are the best things that we must know about the nuclear physics.
Nuclear physics is the field of  
-atomic nuclei
-nuclear power
-nuclear weapons
-nuclear medicine
-magnetic resonance imaging
-material engineering
-ion implatation
-archaeology
-radiocarbon dating 


For this reason,it has been included under the same term in earlier times.

So,

@ The atoms of which every element of matter is composed have a nucleus at the center and electrons whirling about this nucleus that can be visualized as planets circling around a sun, though it is impossible to locate them precisely within the atom. 

@ The nuclei of atoms are composed of protons, which have a positive electrical charge, and neutrons, which are electrically neutral. Electrons are electrically negative and have a charge equal in magnitude to that of a proton. 

And also,

What is the Nuclear (fission) energy:

•The Commercially established since 1956 

 Calder Hall, gas-cooled Magnox NPP at Sellafield (UK), 50 MW  (later 200 MW)

• and Today: ~16% of world’s electricity generation (18% hydro, 66% fossil)

• Switzerland: ~40% (nearly all the rest: hydro)

This is about the structure of the atom (Rutherford’s model):

• Mass concentrated in the nucleus (mH/me ~ 1837)

• Nuclear charge: +Ze (Z: atomic number, e ~ 1.6.10-19 coulomb)

• Quantum mechanical basis for atomic, nuclear structure

• “Classical dimensions”: nucleus ~ 10-13 cm, atom ~ 10-8 cm

Energy units (1eV ~ 1.6.10-19 J)is the :

- Binding energy of outermost electrons ~ order of eV

– Energy involved in chemical reactions ~ same order

- Binding energy of nucleons (constituents of nucleus) ~ order of  MeV !

– Energy in nuclear reactions 106 times greater than in chemical.

This is the Often encountered in nuclear engineering:

- Nuclear fuel, activation of materials, fission products, wastes

- Fundamental law: (λ : decay constant)

- Units of (radio)activity:

- 1 curie (Ci) = 3.7 x 1010 dis/s (activity of 1 gm of Ra226)

- 1 becquerel (Bq) = 1 dis/s

- Example: 1 mCi = 10-3 Ci = 3.7 x 107 Bq = 37 MBq

Binding energy is the Mass defect???

Let's talk about mass defect and binding energy.Im actually not that person who can write and post this confidently...but I can  try my best to share my knowledge with u guys....so be cool, no offence......let just start the party...

Binding energy is the mechanical energy required to disassemble a whole into separate parts.

So,

Mass defect is the difference between the mass of the atom and the sum of the masses of its constituent parts.

Then,  Binding energy is  the amount of energy that must be supplied to a nucleus  to completely separate its nuclear particles.

And,

Binding energy is the energy equivalent of the mass defect.

Also,

 Mass defect can be calculated by using the equation below. 

  

Dm = [ Z(mp + me) + (A-Z)mn ] - Matom 

  

So,binding energy can be calculated by multiplying the mass defect by the factor of 931.5 MeV per amu.

The reader's and followers....

It is possible to convert  between mass and energy. Instead  of  two  separate  conservation  laws,  a  single  conservation  law states  that  the  sum  of  mass  and  energy  is  conserved.  

So with that...do you think that the binding energy is the mass defect???

  

I let you know that the decrease in mass will be accompanied by a corresponding increase in energy and vice versa.

Mass does not magically appear and disappear at random.....

So with this, can u imagine it?