•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

Indonesia’s growing energy needs make the building of nuclear power plants unavoidable in the long term, a senior government official said on Monday.

“In the future, whether we like it or not, nuclear power has to be added [to the energy mix] because it’s cheap and reliable,” said Dahlan Iskan, the minister for state enterprises. He was speaking at an energy policy seminar at the House of Representatives.

Referring to the Fukushima nuclear disaster following the massive March tsunami in Japan, Dahlan said it was important to note that technology continued to evolve.

“The Fukushima technology was 10 years old. When I was general director at [state utility] PLN, I was once offered nuclear technology that wouldn’t even be affected if it were hit by an airplane,” the former Perusahaan Listrik Negara chief said.

Tatang H. Soerwidjaja, an expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), agreed with the minister. He said nuclear power was necessary because the country’s demand for electricity would continue to increase.

According to Tatang, in 14 years, power consumption is set to quadruple.

“Such an extraordinary increase in a relatively small amount of time would be impossible to tackle without taking recourse to building nuclear power plants,” the expert said.

Currently, Indonesia uses around 30,000 megawatts of electricity, but only 71 percent of households are connected to the power grid. That means almost a third of Indonesia’s 240 million people do not have access to electricity. However, the population is expected to grow significantly and so is the demand for electricity.

The National Atomic Energy Agency (Batan) has announced it will conduct seismic testing next year on Bangka island, the proposed site of a 10,000-megawatt nuclear reactor.

The agency is working together with state-run contractor Surveyor Indonesia, which will plant 300 TNT explosives weighing one kilogram each 20 meters below the ground.

Using a geophone, which reads seismic waves in the ground, geologists will be able to determine whether the site is suited to contain a nuclear power plant.

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) will analyze the test’s results and the data produced will be forwarded to the central government for further deliberation and should dictate the final design of the plant.

Bangka was chosen for its relative proximity to Java and Sumatra, Indonesia’s most populous islands. Construction is expected to begin in 2015 and the reactor is set to be operational in 2030 after a five-year testing period.

The power plant is expected to supply 40 percent of electricity needs in the islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali. The government plans to build four nuclear reactors by 2025.