User:Palash Bhowmik/Feasibility study of Nuclear Power Plant in Bangladesh

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1	BACKGROUND Bangladesh is one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world striving to achieve a minimum standard of life for the inhabitants. Electricity is the key ingredient for socio-economic development of any country. Now-a-days, the development of a country is measured by the per-capita energy consumption. Bangladesh has lack of power as well as system inefficiency in the face of growing demand for power consumption. Only around 43% of the population of the country has access to electricity, and per capita commercial energy consumption is the lowest in the world [5]. In this context, Bangladesh is in the immediate need of manifold increase of existing electricity generation capacity. At present, electricity production in Bangladesh is mostly based on existing reserve of conventional energy sources (such as fossil fuel like gas, coal, oil etc) will not be available after few years if the shortage power is generated by only that conventional sources. Moreover, generation of electricity from conventional sources is costly and more significantly polluting the environment. Again, power generation from renewable energy will not be enough to fulfill the huge shortage of power. Installed electric generating capacity of the country in 2007 was 5.269GW, of which 94% was thermal, and the remainder hydroelectric. But now power generation in June 2008 is 3.501 GW for the power demand of above 5GW [5]. It is very essential for Bangladesh to give major concentration on large scale power generation. In this context, Nuclear Power Plants could be the best option for Bangladesh to coup up with the growing demand for large scale power generation. Recently, International Atomic & Energy Association (IAEA) has given approval to Bangladesh to set up Nuclear Power Plant for power generation [2].