ON YOUR MARK

Comparison and Contrast

Recycling has been identified as one way to conserve resources. How might the approach to recycling differ between a developed country and a developing country?

There are many differences between a developed country and a developing country in the effort of recycling. In Japan, trash is being categorized as either 'flammable' trash or 'inflammable' trash. A can recycle bin will be placed beside every aluminum can based vending machine. In Malaysia, you can hardly find a functioning recycle bin---there are recycle bin but either people don't use them or no clearance of the full bin. The basic difference is recycling is already assimilated in almost every Japanese's life where as in Malaysia it's just a start. Although children in Malaysia are being educated and encouraged to recycle, but the society as a whole doesn't has such awareness. A reusable or recyclable thing are indifference with other trash. It is also a consequence that Malaysia are so rich in resources until people just take it as granted and never appreciate it.

Problem-Solution

Choose one recent "engineering disaster" that has affected the environment in one country and explain how could it be avoided.

[Edited]

The Chernobyl disaster is the most serious nuclear plant accident in history. Together with the explosion of reactor unit-4, the radioactive material it released polluted almost all the countries in Europe. The city was abandoned; overall 56 people died within a few months. Also, it raised the possibility of the people live in affected area from getting cancer and even a handicapped baby. These impacts are caused by the flawed reactor design, besides some consecutive serious mistakes made by the plant operators. Obviously, the horrible disaster can actually be avoided. Modern reactor is highly emphasized with safety property. It was designed in such a way that zero radioactive material will be spread when it explode, even though the chance of explosion is almost null. On the other hand, in order to cease man made mistake, automatic safety property should be introduced. For instance, control rods will be inserted in reactor at once automatically when the temperature or pressure over the standard range, while ensure the power supply of control rod and monitoring system. The disaster had taught us that something should be done to prevent the radioactive material from spreading. Thus, a fallout shelter which performs the task should be build for any nuclear-based facilities, including nuclear power plant. Another approach to prevent the disaster happen is to ensure all plant operators are clear with the safety guidelines, besides the knowledge of nuclear science. The ultimate method to prevent the disaster is, of course, not to build a nuclear plant at all! This is possible with the development of alternative energy source such as solar power and fuel cell.

My blogging buddy was Tiffany. =)

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Here are some facts regarding Chernobyl power plant:

"The agreement to build the Chernobyl power plants dates from 1966, when the former Soviet Union decided to develop nuclear production of electricity. The RBMK reactor design also dates from this period. Six 1 000 MWe reactors were planned at that time.

Unit 1, which begin production in 1977, stopped in November 1996. In December 1997, it was decided to decommission.

Unit 2, which was first connected to the grid in December 1978, was stopped in 1991 after damage due to fire. The Ukrainian national authorities decided to definitely close this plant in March 1999.

Unit 3, which started in 1981 has had many shut downs for maintenance, inspections and repairs since 1997. In June 2000, the Ukrainian authorities decided to close it definitely on 15 December 2000.

Units 5 and 6 were under constructions at the site at the time of accident, but were never finished."

-http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/chernobyl/c08.html

Cause-Effect

Deforestation has been pinpointed as a serious environmental problem in Southeast Asia. What are the causes/circumstances that give rise to this problem?

Deforestation is the permanent destruction of indigenous forests and woodlands. Research shows that more than 80 % of the Earth’s natural forests already have been destroyed. Currently, 12 million hectares of forests are cleared annually. Obviously, these are the results from human activities. The major cause of deforestation is logging, despite of legal or illegal. Overpopulation that happen in most country in SE Asia has urged the conversion of forests to agricultural land to feed growing numbers of people. In Indonesia, people are still using fire to clear forest for that purpose and sometimes it cause conflagration that burnt a large scale of forest. Millions of hectares of forest were burnt in 1982-83, 1997-98 and 2002. Construction industry, furniture, paper and even chopsticks manufacturing industry demand a huge number of trunks, causing many forests had been categorized as timber plantation land. As many countries in SE Asia are still developing country, timber is an important resource of national income. Unfortunately, current efforts of recycling paper and re-plantation of tree not able to slow down the rate of deforestation. What make thing worse is people simply don't like to recycle!!

Claymore

Claymore is a large 2-edged sword formerly used by Scottish Highlanders. Imagine you are the highlander and you slash it towards your enemy. If you are strong and skillful, your enemy shall be injured, but if you are not that good and the weapon repel back towards you, you will be in trouble.

The more powerful a tools is, the more danger and risky for you to use it. It is truth for a sword, and so does for a nuclear power plant.

After the Chernobyl disaster that happened in 1986, people treat nuclear energy as the Satan. However, the Ukraine government continued to use the same energy plant until it was fully closed at Nov 2000 .(Only the reactor 4 was exploded, the other 3 did not involve in that incident). This implied that Ukraine desperately need that energy, even though that disaster eventually killed a large amount of human due to the nuclear pollution to the land.

Have you ever done something to reduce the energy usage ? A simple habit such as switch off the light when you don't need it is not just helps to save your bill, but also helps to preserve the energy. For those who still unclear, the supply of electricity is actually determined by the demand.

We are the one who holds the responsibility of the exhausted resource ; we are the one who create the tendency of building a nuclear energy plant. No one will believe that Malaysia has the ability to build a nuclear plant now but please don't deny the possibility for the future.

I do hope that we can develop new technology to generates electricity so that we don't need to rely on such a risky tools.