Safety key to nuclear goal
The latest anti-nuclear online mutterings are a reaction to the rekindled interest among Thai policymakers and investors in pursuing the controversial energy resource.
Recently, the government and investors launched collaboration with foreign governments such as Denmark and the US, while local investors such as SET-listed Global Power Synergy (GPSC), the PTT group's power flagship, and Saha Pathanapibul International are also supporters of SMRs. They are joined by Thai academic institutes such as King Mongkut's University of Technology, which is promoting similar nuclear energy courses at its Lat Krabang and North Bangkok campuses. Today in Bangkok, the government and its backers will hold a seminar titled "A Global Dialogue on SMR Deployment".
This development is good and welcome. Thailand must prepare to tap new energy resources to cater for the demand by manufacturers to produce low-emission goods. As well as fossil-power energy and intermittent renewable energy, the country must think about acquiring a stable power source to feed the exponential demand from data centres and AI operations. Much smaller in size -- around 15-300 megawatts, SMR technology is being touted as the next game changer for industrial sectors that require an on-site clean and stable energy supply.
That means the public must be better informed. There must be a healthy debate on whether and how the country can make use of nuclear energy, given its inherent risks. It is essential that supporters of moves to embrace nuclear energy open their ears to public concerns instead of resorting to platitudes about how beneficial and safe the new technology will be. Likewise, opponents must open their hearts to new information. After all, the world has changed.
For five decades, Thailand has tried and failed to develop nuclear energy. Those efforts have been marred by fearful reactions caused by the catastrophic nuclear accidents at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Japan's Fukushima plant in 2011.
But the real problem has always been a lack of trust in Thai officials and investors to handle public safety standards. It is certainly a valid point. In 2000, it took officials at the Atomic Energy Commission for Peace 17 days to find a spent cobalt-60 cylinder stolen from a warehouse by scrap metal workers who later opened it in one of their homes in Samut Prakan. Three later died from radiation sickness, while 1,872 community members were exposed to different levels of radiation. In 2023, a tube containing radioactive element Caesium-137 went missing from the National Power Plant 5A Company's facility in Prachin Buri province before later being found burned in a scrap metal factory.
That means the public education drive must not be a PR campaign to force acceptance, either. After all, countries with good public approval ratings of their nuclear energy policies are all societies with trustworthy infrastructure, transparency and well-tested safety standards. Simply promoting new technology is not enough.
Without public trust in officials' ability to handle safety, Thailand's quest for nuclear power plants will remain the same pipe dream it has been for the past five decades.
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