The mistakes, cover-ups and profit-maximisation/cost-cutting of the past in Japan have come back to haunt us.
A General Electric Co engineer said he resigned 35 years ago over concern about the safety of a nuclear reactor design used in the now crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan. Dale Bridenbaugh said the “Mark 1″ design had “not yet been designed to withstand the loads” that could be experienced in a large-scale accident. Read the full Reuters report here. Continue reading »
Sime Darby is reported to have incurred an estimated cost over-run of RM1.7 billion on a Bakun Dam contract worth RM1.8 billion.
It is understood the government has agreed to reimburse Sime around RM0.7 billion, leaving the firm to absorb the remaining RM1 billion, The Star reported.
But who actually owns Sime Engineering, which reportedly was awarded the RM1.8 billion contract? The firm is a 100 per cent subsidiary of Sime Darby Bhd, according to the group’s 2009 Annual Report. Sime Darby Bhd in turn is owned by Amanah Saham Bumiputera Scheme (39 per cent), EPF (14 per cent) and PNB (13 per cent). Continue reading »
Just as I thought, there are not going to be any submarine cables from the Bakun Dam to the peninsula.
Check out this Edge report here.
It was always going to be a risky and expensive proposition to lay submarine cables across the South China Sea even though the technology is there. The project, had it gone ahead, would have been the world’s longest undersea power transmission link; it would have entered uncharted territory, an expensive journey into the unknown.
The whole rationale, during the Mahathir administration, for building this jinxed dam was to supply power to the peninsula.
Now that the original justification for the dam is no longer there, what are they going to do with all the power from the Bakun Dam? Has Tenaga now realised that Bakun could be choked with sedimentation in a few years? Check out the warnings here. And look at this lamentation from Belaga over the social and environmental cost of Bakun.
Contractors have been carrying out open burning at the site of the Bakun Dam, claims a Sarawak watchdog network.
The Sarawak Conservation Action Network (Scane), which brings together about half a dozen indigenous and environmental groups in the state, said in a statement:
The contracts for clear-cutting forest have been commissioned to some contractors since the beginning of the year. The forest area which will be cleared for the dam is 80,000 ha, that is, roughly the size of Singapore Island.
Recently the Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd managing director Zulkifle Osman announced that the impoundment of water catchments would start in October; by then the whole dam reservoir will be flooded. By July 2010, testing for electricity transmission from Bakun dam will start.
Now comes news that Tenaga is planning two new hydroelectric plants in Terengganu and Pahang (see report below).
Doesn’t this fly against the justification for the laying of submarine cables to transmit electricity from the Bakun Dam in Sarawak to the peninsula – that there would be no need for expensive new capacity on the peninsula?
Energy Minister Peter Chin said last month that the Cabinet had agreed that opting for the Bakun submarine cable project would be better than continuing to build new power plants in the peninsula. “In the long term, it will be more economical and viable to transmit power from Bakun to Peninsular Malaysia even though the undersea cable project will be very costly,” he said.
So, what’s going on? Was Peter Chin unaware of these two new dams in the peninsula – or was he simply having us on?