By Rathindra Kuruwita

The Cabinet of Ministers has approved the signing of the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage and Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, Saminda Jayasekara, Chairman at the Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Regulatory Council said recently at an event organized by the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka.

The Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) aims at establishing a minimum national compensation amount and at further increasing the amount of compensation through public funds to be made available by the Contracting Parties should the national amount be insufficient to compensate for the damage caused by a nuclear incident.

The Vienna Convention on Civil Liability aims at harmonizing the national law of the Contracting Parties by establishing some minimum standards to provide financial protection against damage resulting from certain peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

However, the Cabinet has not approved the signing of the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy and the Joint Protocol Relating to the Application of the Vienna Convention and the Paris Convention, Jayasekara said.

Jayasekara mentioned that western European countries could only be enticed to build nuclear power plants in Sri Lanka only if Sri Lanka signs Paris Convention.

“If we are not a part of those conventions western European countries won’t come to Sri Lanka,” he said.

Meanwhile, Malinda Ranaweera, scientific officer at the Sri Lanka Atomic Energy Board said that nuclear energy is becoming popular in Asia. China, Japan, and South Korea are leading the way in Asia, he said. India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan too have nuclear power plants.

“In Asia there is a big nuclear renaissance. China has 59 reactors with several others under construction, South Korea has 28, and Japan has 33. India has 19 reactors and is constructing eight more,” he said.

Sri Lanka is in a decision making phase with the Cabinet recently approving nuclear as an energy option, he said.

SMRs can also be coupled with solar and wind power, he added.

He added that Sri Lanka needs about 400 megawatts of electricity per day when the Colombo Port City Project is complete. The power should be cheap in order to attract foreign investments, Ranaweera said. If the metropolitan light railway system is implemented it will need an additional 200 megawatts, he added.

Ranaweera said another 200 megawatts will be needed if the government converts the conventional train system into an electrified train system.

“All these need cheap power,” he said.

Sri Lanka has been considering nuclear power since 1974, Ranaweera said. In 2010 Cabinet approval was given to conduct a pre-feasibility study to consider a nuclear power programme in the country, he said.

“In February 2024 the Cabinet of Ministers approved “to take the strategic and knowledgeable decision to forward the electricity generation using nuclear power in Sri Lanka as a safe, clean, green, reliable and affordable energy source,” he said.

It takes about 15 years to complete a nuclear power plant project from scratch and Sri Lanka should get to work on it immediately, Dr. Thushara Rathnayake, senior lecturer, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Moratuwa said.

Nuclear is a clean energy source with a high output from a single plant, she said.

“This is a highly safe medium, and it is economical. The generation cost is highly dependent on capital cost (about 60 percent), the fuel cost is about 20 percent from the generation cost. Although the capital cost is high, lifetime cost is low and the introduction of carbon taxes would make nuclear energy more economical.”

Rathnayake said that public acceptance would be one of the largest challenges in establishing a nuclear power plant in Sri Lanka. However, compared to other power sources, nuclear power is safer. The country can also suffer a huge economic loss, if we build a conventional large reactor and the plant is not operated throughout the life cycle.

“If you look at the capital cost of nuclear power, generated for a conventional large reactor, it’s about 7,000 US dollars per kilowatt hour. Cost of coal is about 4,000 dollars. But if you consider the health, social and environmental costs, the capital cost is almost equal to nuclear energy. However, nuclear power has a capacity factor of about 94 percent. Other intermittent sources like wind and solar have a low-capacity factor. So, if we calculate the levelized cost of energy, nuclear is very much cost competitive to other power sources,” she said.

Rathnayake added that if the government decides to go for a large nuclear reactor, it will have to incur a large capital investment. So Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), i.e., less than 300 MWs, should interest Sri Lanka more.

“Currently four SMRs, in advanced stages of construction, are being built in Argentina, China and Russia. The capital costs are also low. I said the capital cost of nuclear power is about 7,000 US dollars per kilowatt hour, but for an SMR the cost is about 2,900 dollars. It also only takes 1.5 years to construct, compared to five years taken to build a conventional large reactor,” she said.

Nuclear power also uses the least amount of land to generate a megawatt hour of electricity, she said. This is about 1.3 square metres per megawatt hour.

“SMRs suit smaller grids like ours. We can also think about offshore in-built SMRs, which are cheaper, less risky and we won’t have to worry about handling Spent Nuclear Fuel,” she said.