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Indonesian Government Eyeing Bangka Island for 2 Nuclear Power Plants
Ririn Radiawati Kusuma | October 28, 2010

Nuclear power plants such as this one provide massive amounts of cheap energy, but the risk of a meltdown or other radioactive disaster is too much for many activists to accept. (EPA Photo/Daniel Karmann) Nuclear power plants such as this one provide massive amounts of cheap energy, but the risk of a meltdown or other radioactive disaster is too much for many activists to accept. (EPA Photo/Daniel Karmann)
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marcel
4:50pm Nov 1, 2010

@forgetyourself

i hope you are being sarcastic since malaysia have nothing to do with this sincerely.i might also be afraid to critised them to avoid unprecedented threat an term of words and intimidation.hehehe


marcel
4:42pm Nov 1, 2010

@forgetyourself

not to mention,it will affect the singapore as well.

like the forest open fire recently affect singapore as much as malaysia did.hehehehe


forgetyourself
9:29am Nov 1, 2010

@Iyong: i understand what you are saying. Padt could try to criticize without being offensive to 'all' Indonesians. Contrary to what he says, I'm sure he would be too afraid to criticize in an offensive manner in front of his 40 Indonesian friends he is having for dinner.


enakajah
7:52am Nov 1, 2010

To design, build and maintain this plant would require an international tender and oversight by the atomic energy commission. Two points that would insure the safest ( please note the word safest and it's implication) design and operating conditions.

If designed and built by people with experience like the French, Russian, German, British or US companies and under the AEC oversight there is no reason to believe that the station would be anything but safe.

The ferench I understand have a very large number of plant with no safety failure history to date. This comes from good design and good construction and good oversight.

Plants now are designed to be pretty much failsafe unlike the 30 year old plants like Chernobyl and 3 mile island.

I see no real reason here for Indonesia to be any less likely to be able to run nuclear plants than anyone else. Regardless of the opinions here on standards and corruption. With the correct oversight which will be mandatory by the AEC and the international community, there is little reason why this should not be seriously considered.

This is not a plant like any other. It is not an airline, or gas bottles or the myriad of domestic commercial operations. This is a plant that would be monitored extremely closely.

Getting over the waste disposal, the temptation to develop weapons and proper power distribution would be more of a problem than the plant failing and giving us all an orange Afro.

In the end this has the possibility to be a lot more eco friendly than the current coal and diesel fueled stations we have at the moment. They are killing us all slowly but surely as it is.

ardes
4:05am Nov 1, 2010

Hi ALL, been interesting reading all your comments here and I can see most makes legitimate comments bar a few personal ones. My view is that Indonesians needs to have better working ethics and discipline...letting go of selfishness of wanting to look after oneself and forgo the nation's interest (corruption). If All Indonesians aim to better the Nation as a whole and aim to be a develop contry rather then sitting on the fringe of third world...maybe we have a chance. My Indonesia needs to learn to crawl first before trying to walk then maybe we can start and learn to run.

Theres other social issues much more needed for the people of Indo to obtain (No poverty, affordable Health system, international standard education....etc..etc)

$6 billion dollars is a lot of money to help solved and achieve those.

Jakarta. The National Nuclear Energy Agency on Thursday said it was looking for locations on Bangka Island to build two large nuclear power plants worth Rp 54 trillion ($6 billion).

Hudi Hastowo, the chief of the agency also known as Batan, said the agency had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Bangka-Belitung provincial government on Tuesday regarding plans to build the nuclear plants on Bangka.

“We are doing the survey, but I have not yet received the results,” he said.

Herman Agustiawan, a member of the National Energy Council, said the government planned to build two nuclear plants on Bangka: A 10,000 megawatt plant in west Bangka and an 8,000 megawatt plant in south Bangka.

“The governor already agreed and there is no complaint from the public,” he said.

Herman said all the necessary legal paperwork had been completed to proceed — except for the permission of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

“As soon as the president says ‘go nuclear’ we will start to build it,” he said, adding that construction could begin as soon as 2011, and would take about 10 years.

Bangka was chosen partly because it is not located in the earthquake-prone region known as the Ring of Fire, Herman said.

Plans to build nuclear power plants on Bangka follow Batan’s defeated attempts to build a nuclear plant on the Muria Peninsula in Central Java.

In July, Hudi conceded that the government would be unlikely to meet its goal of building a nuclear power plant by 2016, due to strong opposition from residents of Jepara district on the Muria Peninsula, which forced Batan to abandon its plans there. He predicted then that it would take another two or three years to find a suitable location, given the need for painstaking studies.

The provincial administrations of Banten, Gorontalo, and West, South and East Kalimantan had also expressed an interest in hosting the nuclear plants after the Muria plant was abandoned.

Herman said the biggest remaining question was who would own and operate the plants. He said the government would form a team called the nuclear energy program implementation organization to decide whether the government or private sector would build and operate them.

Arif Fiyanto, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said the group would fight plans to build nuclear plants on Bangka.

“It’s SBY’s commitment to not build nuclear power plants under his presidency,” he said, referring to the president by his initials.

Arif said that recently the government had been promoting nuclear power through television advertisements. “But they only mention the good side of it.”

The bad side, he said, was that its radiation and waste could harm those living nearby.