Dear Members,

In the first message in this series dated 15 April 2018, I promised to update you on the events that has been organised and held since our inception on 14^th Dec 2018. I am pleased to do so in this message.

Floating Nuclear Power Plant

Our first and perhaps our most important lecture to date was a talk delivered by Professor Jacopo Buongiorno, Director of Center of Advanced Nuclear Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Jan 16^th at NUS. Professor Buongiorno has carried out extensive research on the safety and stability of “spar” technology as a platform for a 300MW and 1100MW nuclear power plant. I have been following his work for many months and when I got wind that he was making a trip to Asia, I immediately grasped the opportunity to invite him over to Singapore even before this Society was formed and of course had not even a bank account. I knew a subject such as this would be able to attract sponsors and it did. We raised enough funds to meet all the expenses and I would record my thanks once again to the generous sponsors whose name appears in the banner at our Gallery.

In 2012, the Government released a prefeasibility study on nuclear power for Singapore. This was in the wake of the Fukushima accident and a call for a moratorium on nuclear power plants construction in a number of European countries and Japan. The timing was a bit unfortunate as no committee would be have the moral courage to come out with a different recommendation than what it did which as to say it Singapore was not ready for it even as the need for energy diversification was so pressing.

In 2012, the concept of an offshore floating nuclear power plant had not emerged. Perhaps it is timely to revisit the 2012 prefeasibility study with this concept in mind.

The Application & Technology of Floating Structures

On March 1^st, the Society organised a half-day conference at the Singapore Institute of Technology @ Dover. The program, synopses and bio of the speakers are documented here.

It was also well attended. Shimizu’s “Green Float” attracted a lot of interest. Its sheer size was overwhelming. A tower of 1000 meters floating on an island of 3000 meters diameter is a futuristic vision that may one day come to past when mega cities gets too crowded. It is certainly makes a lot of sense for countries with very small foot print on land and a smaller footprint on water, which is what Singapore is.

It may be difficult to design the foundation to hold up such an enormous structure on terra firma but certainly possible on water, thanks to Archimedes’ Principle. Such a mega floating structure would behave in a more predictable manner, based on engineering principles, under the action of earthquakes and tsunamis than an equivalent structure design on the with current knowledge of geomechanics.

If you think about it, an enormous community in a Green Float would need a power supply that could run for several years without refuelling. MIT offshore nuclear power plant would fit the bill perfectly.

Lim Soon Heng

12 May 2018