Creating prosperity for the people is the main goal of all countries in the world. The indicator used by the world (UNDP) to measure the level of prosperity is the Human Development Index (HDI). In particular, it measures achievements in three critical dimensions: health and life expectancy, education, and standard of living. A country is said to have a high level of prosperity as can be seen from the HDI which is greater than 0.8, while Indonesia’s HDI level in 2020 is 0.718.
These three dimensions are closely related to economic development. Economic development of a nation is an important pillar for the implementation of the development process in all fields. A society whose economic development is successful is characterized by a high income per capita. One of the sectors that contributes the most to economic growth is the industrial sector.
In some developed countries, the role of the industrial sector is more dominant than the agricultural sector. The industrial sector plays a key role as an engine of development because it has several advantages over other sectors, because the capital capitalization value embedded is very large, the ability to absorb a large manpower, as well as the ability to create value added from each input or basic material that is processed.
If the economy increases, the demand for goods and services by the household sector will increase. This will be responded by the industrial sector to increase production capacity. In meeting the demand for goods and services, industry sector will increase the demand for input goods, including the demand for electrical energy. The impact of increasing demand for goods and services will increase manpower income. If people’s incomes increase, it will have an impact on increasing purchasing power so that the consumption of goods and services, including electricity consumption will increase furthermore. And the rotation of this cycle will continue to produce positive economic growth.
With nuclear energy supplying electricity in Indonesia, stable, reliable, affordable and large-scale energy will be available that can support the growth of the industrial sector. The cheaper and more affordable electrical energy, the more competitive the price of industrial output will be. Nuclear energy is clean, environmentally friendly and sustainable energy, reliable and stable because it is not affected by weather and has a relatively low level of price volatility.
With all the advantages of nuclear energy, it can be said that to achieve prosperity, Indonesia urgently needs nuclear energy. Because there are no other energy sources that have so many advantages like nuclear energy. Without the role of nuclear energy, it will be very difficult to increase the growth of the industrial sector and catch up with the economy and prosperity from neighboring countries such as Malaysia and Singapore as well as to achieve the commitment of net-zero emission.
Many lessons can be learned from nuclear reactor accidents such as Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima Daiichi (2011). This accident provided valuable input in the development of technology and the design of nuclear power plants to become safer. As Lesson learned from the Fukushima Daiichi accident, more back-up redundancy is needed in different places. Increase grace period, do not depend on technology, do not depend on electricity instead use natural physics law for critical safety system. This can be applied to the ThorCon design and makes the ThorCon design has many advantages from the aspect of the safety system.
ThorCon designs have a long grace period, over 200 days. This makes heat dissipation after station blackout passively occur over 6 months without any intervene. While conventional nuclear power plants are only capable of a maximum of 4 days. Using a liquid fuel that is unlikely to occur core meltdown and has a high margin of phase change temperature, more than 700 °C.
Fission products produced during operation such as Iodine-131, Cesium-137, and Strontium-90 are ionically bound in molten salt so that it is impossible to release to the environment. And when the reactor goes out, the molten salt will be safely accommodated in a drain tank under the reactor core.
The heat dissipation system works passively (walk away safety), without pump, without electricity, and without operator intervention. But rely on the laws of nature. Earthquake resistance up to PGA 1.0 g. Has 3 layers of protection, of which the last layer is made of steel and concrete with a thickness of 3 meters. Also, it operates at low pressure (3 bar) so that there is no possibility of a hydrogen explosion and breach of the barrier as experienced by Fukushima Daiichi.
The criteria for environmentally friendly energy include:
The use of nuclear fuel to generate electricity causes no emissions of greenhouse gases. Even if the full life cycle of a nuclear power plant is calculated, the emissions of greenhouse gases are negligible. Nuclear power has one of the lowest carbon footprints of any energy source. Due to its high energy density, nuclear power has the smallest land use intensity. It is 30 times smaller than wind and 15 times smaller than solar PV. To generate 1000 MW of electricity the ThorCon plant only requires about 10 hectares of land. For comparison, coal power plants in Indonesia with a capacity of 2 x 1000 MW are built on land that reaches 100 hectares or even more.
Due to minimal land requirements, it can avoid environmental and ecosystem damage caused by land clearing. In the operation of nuclear power, there are no moving mechanical parts that can threaten animals or produce infrasound that can cause health problems or no emission except water vapor. Also does not cause air or radiation pollution. The waste generated is minimal. During 60 years of operation, the waste generated per person is only the size of a can of soda. And this waste will be stored in dry cask storage and managed strictly. No other category of waste is recorded so precisely and stored so safely.
Nuclear power is the only scalable energy source that meets all four criteria. ThorCon has its own source of funding that does not require state budget and subsidies and can produce cheap electricity. With the simple, compact, and modular design of the ThorCon plant, as well as the advantages of the MSR reactor type which has fuel flexibility are several factors that cause competitive prices.
In addition to the abundant availability of nuclear fuel, nuclear power also has the lowest material requirements compared to other sources and with a long service life, the average commercial nuclear power plant approaches 40 years. Even by design the age of the Thorcon plant is 80 years. Besides being environmentally friendly, the Thorcon plant is also a sustainable energy both economically and in terms of resources (fuel and materials).
The world is currently facing the issue of depletion of fossil sources as primary energy sources, as well as the decreasing quality of the environment due to the high activity of producing energy from fossil materials, so an energy transition is needed. Transitional energy that replaces fossil energy should have a minimum capability equivalent to it, especially coal, which can be used as primary energy and as a base load power plant. It needs energy that has high reliability. Nuclear has the highest capacity factor of any other energy source. Nuclear power plants are producing maximum power more than 93% of the time during the year. That’s about 1.5 to 2 times more than natural gas and coal units, and 2.5 to 3.5 times more reliable than wind and solar power plants.
In addition, transitional energy must also have advantages from environmentally friendly, sustainable, and economic aspects over fossil energy. As is well known, nuclear power plants emit very low greenhouse gas emissions, and even then they are generated indirectly. Nuclear energy also requires a smaller area because it has a very high energy density, this can avoid destroying land and ecosystems. The waste produced is also much less, even the waste generated by nuclear energy sources is the only one that is contained and managed with very strict rules. Nuclear waste management is carried out with the principle of “from cradle to grave”.
ThorCon with the IPP (Independent Power Producer) concept will build a TMSR500 type nuclear power plant (Thorium Molten Salt Reactor) in Indonesia with an investment cost of around US$1.2 billion or around Rp17 trillion. No subsidies and no burden on the state budget. The fuel used by the TMSR500 is a mixture of Uranium and Thorium, which is very abundantly available. ThorCon can provide electricity selling prices that are competitive with coal and below the National Cost of Supply (BPP), which is US$0.069 per kWh. Therefore, ThorCon’s natural and economic resources do not burden the environment, the country or society.
ThorCon as a nuclear power plant produces no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, and over its life cycle, nuclear power produces the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emissions like wind power, and a third of the emissions compared to solar power.
Experts concluded that to achieve the deep decarbonization required to control the global average temperature rise below 1.5°C, if nuclear energy does not play a greater role, it will be more difficult to deal with climate change. Because nuclear power is reliable and can be deployed on a large scale, it can directly replace fossil fuel power generation and avoid burning fossil for electricity generation.
From the picture above, made by Grant Chalmers, only nuclear and hydro power have a significant effect on decarbonization. However, hydro power has several drawbacks, such as dependence on rainfall which causes instability, impacts on the environment and the surrounding ecosystem, cannot approach loads or limited plant locations, and so forth.
Examples of countries that have successfully achieved zero emission targets are France and the United States (US). France derives more than 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy, which is around 400 TWh. The carbon intensity of energy in France is also quite low, about 57.3 gCO2/kWh of electricity generated in 2020.
United States has long used nuclear power plants with electricity production reaching 800 TWh. No other source, renewable or otherwise, contributes as much as nuclear to meeting US energy demand without emissions. Every year, nuclear-generated electricity saves the atmosphere from more than 471 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions that would otherwise come from fossil fuels. That equates to removing nearly 100 million passenger vehicles from the US roads.
ThorCon is not only able to meet the expectations of the Indonesian government but also has the potential to be a practical solution to climate change so that it can support Indonesia’s commitment to achieve the COP 21 target which has been ratified into Law (UU) No. 16/2016.