Singapore’s nuclear question

Surviving in a resource-scarce island city-state demands pragmatic realism. For Singapore, energy security on the densely populated island city-state has always been an issue.

And as revealed in a recent report by The Straits Times, Singapore has been looking long and hard into energy sources the island can still explore.

In a regulatory and technical milestone revealed in the same report, a recent study conducted by Singaporean authorities in collaboration with Swedish nuclear pioneer SKB International, has concluded that no major technical showstoppers would prevent the republic from safely storing high-level radioactive waste deep down and within its borders.

This research was originally commissioned back in 2023 by the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and the National Environment Agency (NEA), and the findings point to a calculated step forward. The data in the report backs a policy shift with the Singaporean government confirming that it will undergo a comprehensive country assessment by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in 2027. This assessment will have 19 critical operational parameters that will officially determine the nation’s capability to safely deploy nuclear reactors by as early as 2040.

The Olympic pool

For decades, the primary psychological and logistical barrier to nuclear adoption in Singapore has been a simple question of geometry: where do you put the waste on such a small island. The SKB International study directly addresses this question by breaking down the actual physical footprint of nuclear byproducts into a stark, highly humanised baseline comparison.

A standard 1-gigawatt (1GW) conventional large-scale reactor capable of powering roughly 700,000 homes produces approximately 370,000 litres of nuclear waste per year. To the average citizen, that volume sounds staggering. In reality, it fills just one-seventh (14.2%) of a single Olympic-sized swimming pool.

When placed in the context of a national landfill, the space constraints dissolve further. Singapore’s active Semakau Landfill has a volumetric capacity exceeding that of 11,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Only 5% of that annual nuclear byproduct is classified as high-level waste, such as spent uranium fuel rods containing plutonium-239, which carries a 240,000-year radiation decay timeline.

And given that the study verified that these compact waste isolation frameworks are fully compatible with Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), the advanced, lower-capacity systems (up to 300MW) that Singapore is actively monitoring for urban deployment, by translating complex nuclear physics into manageable spatial dimensions, the report shifts the domestic debate from a structural impossibility to a question of strict technical execution.

Granite shield

The geological foundation of Singapore’s nuclear ambitions lies right underneath its urban sprawl. Mark Lim, Chairman of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society’s Singapore chapter, confirmed via The Straits Times that the city-state is uniquely positioned due to its well-characterised, remarkably stable bedrock. The central core of the island is anchored by the Bukit Timah granite formation, which stretches from Woodlands and Sembawang down through Bukit Batok, complemented by massive granite reserves on Pulau Ubin.

This specific granite is an exceptional natural vault. It is hard, dense, and highly impermeable, qualities that naturally block groundwater, and prevent any potential radionuclide migration. However, the EMA has urged strict caution. Because the SKB study was an initial desktop review, the state must now transition to intensive, physical on-site field surveys. Future exploratory drilling must prove that target granite sectors are completely unfractured and free of minor fault lines. In deep borehole storage, even a microscopic fracture path could allow groundwater to interact with containment canisters, making field verification the ultimate technical hurdle.

Navigating the psychology of density

Yet while the engineering parameters might look promising, nuclear energy specialists stress that the steepest challenge facing the Cabinet is not geological, but social. Matthew Chew, nuclear competency and strategy lead at engineering consultancy HY, pointed out in The Straits Times that Finland’s Onkalo repository, the world’s first operational deep granite tomb, set to go live later this year, took four decades of continuous public engagement, site selection disputes, and legislative ratifications to materialise. Finland succeeded because it built deep institutional trust with its population over generations.

Given Singapore’s extreme population density, introducing radioactive storage sites will require an unprecedented, highly transparent public education campaign. To mitigate localised anxieties and "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) types, early infrastructure designs suggest that any future disposal facility would likely be placed completely away from high-density residential zones. Instead, the repositories would be carved deep beneath less-developed state land sectors or hidden under a smaller but dedicated offshore island.

This careful management of information, holding onto the 2023 SKB findings until aligning them with the upcoming 2027 IAEA milestone, demonstrates the Singaporean government's signature risk-mitigation strategy. As the nation prepares to come under IEA scrutiny next year, the administration isn't just preparing a technical defence of its granite; it is beginning the delicate process of proving to global inspectors and its own citizens that a modern, high-tech city-state can safely master the atom.