The Impact of East Asia's Nuclear Energy Development Program on Southeast Asia Countries

Commonly countries around the world view nuclear development in a negative light; that is threatening to national security. The nuclear disaster that happened on August 1945 in Japan, sacrificing over 200,000 lives and the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine on 26 April 1986 has drawn the attention of world community on the consequence of nuclear as energy resource (Ku Seman Ku Hussain, 2005). In actual fact, nuclear is an energy source providing positive impact to economic, politics and progress of a nation. Unfortunately, nuclear resources had been misconstrued and have become one of the factors that led Third World countries development process rate to lag behind developed countries. The spread of nuclear energy resources to Third World countries especially countries in the Asia-Pacific region at the moment is as a result of world community's awareness with interest and concern in developing nuclear energy as an alternative energy resource. The successful of several Develop Countries such as Japan and Third World countries such as South Korea, Brazil, India and Pakistan who have developed their own nuclear power have change the perception of the other Third World countries about the importance of nuclear power. This scenario brought effect and provides an opportunity to Malaysia to start paying attention on nuclear energy resource development.