INGENIEUR
INGENIEUR
civilian nuclear power plant by 2030 and perhaps two more by 2035.
Currently, there’ s yet to be any concrete plans to build nuclear power plants in the region. However, these new developments show that there’ s always a possibility in the future, as Southeast Asia’ s energy demands keep growing.
Gaining public support for such projects could be difficult though. Nuclear energy might not produce any greenhouse gasses, but nuclear accidents can cause irreversible long-term environmental damage as seen in the cases of Fukushima and Chernobyl. The former president of Vietnam, Truong Tan San admitted that the Fukushima disaster played a significant role in the Government’ s decision to abandon its nuclear energy program.
As energy demand in the region grows, ASEAN member states must find ways to address it. While countries such as India, China and Russia might be willing to assist the region with its nuclear energy development programs, ASEAN nations shouldn’ t allow themselves to be pressured into complying with the geopolitical ambitions of these nuclear powers.
If Southeast Asia decides to go nuclear one day, it should chart its own nuclear plans. Perhaps before ASEAN countries explore the nuclear option, they should exhaust their renewable energy options first.
ERIN AIL WORTH The Race to Build A Wind Behemoth
Some of the world’ s top manufacturing companies are embroiled in a fierce competition. The contest: Who can build the most powerful offshore wind turbine?
From General Electric Co.( GE) to Siemens AG to MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, industrial giants are racing to build skyscraper-sized turbines that can generate 10 megawatts apiece or more, a symbolic threshold for the wind industry. The more powerful the turbine, the cheaper it can generate electricity from a single location, generally speaking. The prize in this engineering derby could be dominance over a multibillion-dollar offshore wind market that is set to boom in coming decades— notably in the
U. S., where the Atlantic coast beckons as an ideal location for large-scale wind generation.
“ There’ s a kind of arms race under way,” says Aaron Barr, a principal consultant with research firm Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.
Bigger and Bolder
Offshore wind turbines have been growing larger for years as companies develop bigger and bolder designs. That’ s helped steadily lower the price of generating power from wind.
When the first offshore wind farm, Vindeby, was commissioned in shallow waters off Denmark in 1991, its 450-kilowatt turbines stood 52.5 meters tall and had blades 16 meters long( or about 170 feet tall and 52 feet long). The turbines were designed by a company that’ s now part of Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, in which Siemens has a majority stake.
Vindeby’ s 11 turbines, decommissioned last year, would be Lilliputians compared with the mammoth machines now being built. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, the average offshore turbine installed in 2017 was a 5.9 megawatt( or 5,900 kilowatt) machine. GE’ s model of around that size, six megawatts, is 170 meters tall.
The most powerful turbine currently in existence, MHI Vestas’ s V164 prototype, is capable of generating 9.5-megawatts of electricity, and is 187 meters tall, or roughly twice the height of the Statue of Liberty. Its 80-meter-long blades stretch nearly 12 meters farther than the wingspan of a Boeing 747.“ We are simply trying to push it to the limit all the time to see how far we can go,” says Torben Larsen, chief technology officer at MHI Vestas, a partnership of Vestas Wind Systems A / S and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.
The Race to 10
The next phase in the competition is surpassing the 10-megawatt barrier.
An executive at Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy hinted at the idea of such a large machine in 2016, but the company has remained largely mum on its efforts since.
German turbine maker Senvion SA caused a stir in the industry last year when it revealed it
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