Singapore Had A Secret Plan To Develop Nuclear Energy
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By
The Must Share News Team - 23 Sep 2018, 10:39 am
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Singapore Government Wanted To Build A Nuclear Energy Plant On Pedra Branca
When we think about nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, we tend to think of superpowers like America and Russia.
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But did you know that our Little Red Dot has had many brushes with both nuclear energy and bombs?
From nukes in Tengah to a nuclear reactor on Pedra Branca, we explore Singapore’s fascinating nuclear story after the jump.
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1. Singapore once housed 48 nuclear bombs
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At the height of the Cold War in the early 1960s, Britain secretly
deployed 48 of its “Red Beard” nuclear bombs to Singapore. The Red Beard was Britain’s first tactical nuclear weapon and boasted yields similar to the bombs used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
The UK’s Royal Air Force held these bombs at RAF Tengah, in case communist China initiated a war.
But Tunku Abdul Rahman, then prime minister of Malaysia — which Singapore was a part of — was not informed of the 48 nukes inside his country.
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In fact, Britain’s then-high commissioner said the presence of even dummy weapons in the region would be “politically sensitive”.
2. A nuclear reactor at Pedra Branca?
At the 2008 Singapore Energy Conference, founding PM Lee Kuan Yew
revealed that the government had once thought about building a nuclear power plant on Pedra Branca. Yes,
that island that Malaysia keeps squabbling with us over.
Considering that international standards require a 30km wide safety radius around a nuclear plant, it would be impossible to build a nuclear plant on mainland Singapore.