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Nuclear Energy Still Safe for Indonesia, Experts Say
Ismira Lutfia & Yuli Krisna | March 16, 2011

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satel
2:42pm Mar 16, 2011

Ohh goodie. The Indonesian government can't even maintain basic infrastructure such as roads, telephone, drainage etc and they think they can build a safe nuclear reactor? Need to work out where it is being built and move several thousand kilometers away.

batavus
1:56pm Mar 16, 2011

After the Batan guy, Ferhat Aziz, made a statement that "no need to worry since we have other areas [not prone to quakes]", I am really worry now about Indonesians dealing with nuclear plants. The man does not even know that the cause of the Japanese reactor problem is not earthquake. The problem stems from the fact that those nuclear plants are having loss of offsite powers. All the ten plants were shutdown safely after the earthquake, but it is the loss of offsite powers due to tsunami that caused the fuel cooling problems. Are they start digging holes in Bangka?

JohnKramer
12:55pm Mar 16, 2011

You guys worried too much, in case of meltdown, all we need is a water hose and a couple knives.

vanqobas
12:50pm Mar 16, 2011

OUTRAGES!! You don't have to be an expert to see that Indonesia'S geographical area is NOT suitable for nuclear reactor plant.

Natural risks are volcanoes, earthquake, Tsunami, cyclone, flood just to name a few. External risks are human errors, terorism and cut corners in building process for corruption.

Our beloved Indonesia is blessed with geothermal, rivers for hydropowers, coal, all year around SUN FOR solar power, ocean for wave-hydropwer and off-shore wind generation, huge sugar cane and palm oil industry for biodiesel.

$2.3 billion is more than enough to build all of the above industry and surely will fullfil Indonesia's thirst for electricity, in the process of doing so will generate much needed employment in a massive scale.

Open up electricity retail, power grid and generation industries for competiotion, stop the monopoly by PLN then you will see power industry flourishing like telecommunication sector.

Nuclear power plant is a short sighted, lazy vision by envious beauracrats.

Nuclear will do more harm than good when its fail.

SAY NO TO NUCLEAR!!!

Roland
11:59am Mar 16, 2011

"...because there are areas that are relatively safe” - please define "Relatively"? I agree absolutely that Indonesia needs for the growth of its economy more electric power than now provided, and especially not sporadic blackouts. But I simply cannot believe that $9.2 Billion (4 X $2.3 Bill. per each proposed nuclear plant) cannot be used to install geothermal, hydro-electrical or tidal power stations instead.

As another reader mentioned in his comment in a related article in JG the real fear lies not in the 'relative' safety of the place of establishment, but rather within sloppy construction work and especially in a desperately weak maintenance of these proposed plants.

Looking at any construction in Indonesia lazy maintenance can be virtually everywhere observed, without exception, this all in combination with rampant corruption, which would for sure also be a major obstacles in the construction and maintenance of any nuclear power plant (no matter which generation).

SO, I personally take any recommendations by Indonesian experts with some caution - just a few months ago some other experts insisted that smoking is actually healthy!

Well, money talks and ...

With renewed fears of nuclear energy amid the ongoing crisis in Japan, Indonesian experts have sought to assure the public that nuclear plants were still feasible options. 

The fears are exacerbated by the knowledge that the country sits in one of the most volatile seismic areas on the planet, at the meeting point of several continental plates. 

But not all parts of the country are quake-prone, experts said. 
 
“We are luckier than Japan because there are areas that are relatively safe” for nuclear plants, said Irwan Meilano, an earthquake expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). 

Addressing a news conference on Monday, Irwan pointed to the northern part of Java, Bangka-Belitung, Banten and Borneo. 

Ferhat Aziz, the National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan) spokesman, has also said "there is no need to worry since we have other areas [not prone to quakes] such as Kalimantan and the southern part of Sumatra."

The proposed site for two nuclear plants in Bangka-Belitung province — in Muntok, West Bangka, and Permis, South Bangka — were not prone to earthquakes nor at risk of a tsunami, said Natio Lasman, chairman of the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency (Bapeten). 

“Bapeten would definitely not recommend the establishment of a nuclear plant on the western part of Sumatra or the southern part of Java close to the border of tectonic plates,” he said, adding that the Bangka-Belitung area had a stable record of seismic and volcanic activity.  
   
ITB nuclear expert also said Zaki Su’ud said building a reactor had to go through strict monitoring and surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

He also said Fukushima’s weakness was that the reactors did not use a passive safety system that could naturally reduce heat by using gravitational forces. 

“I recommend that if we want to build a nuclear reactor in Indonesia, it should at the minimum be of the third or fourth generation, the fourth being 100 percent reliant on a passive safety system. Even if sabotaged, it would not explode,” Zaki said. 

He also said the site chosen for the construction should meet at least 15 requirements, including that it is not prone to natural disasters. 

He said the rapidly growing demand for electricity made the use of nuclear power plants urgent in Indonesia, but that the earliest the country could begin building one would be in 2018. 

He said the government had only made plans to build four nuclear reactors, each requiring an outlay of up to Rp 20 trillion ($2.3 billion), by 2025. It is estimated the plants will produce about 4,000 megawatts of electricity, or a fourth of Java’s annual usage.