Govt goes ahead with nuclear plant plan
Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Power in the country, it seems, is going nuclear again.
Seeking solutions to the steady increase of energy demand in the country amid declining oil output, the government has decided to go ahead with plans to construct nuclear power plants, with the first one to begin construction in 2010.
Speaking in the launch of the blueprint on the development of country's energy industry, the National Atomic Energy Agency (Batan) chief Soedyartomo Soentono said that the first 1,000- megawatt (MW) nuclear power plant was expected to be delivered in 2016.
Three more plants of similar capacity, which will be built in Muria in Central Java, will follow in 2017, 2023, and 2024, respectively, he said on Friday.
"Nuclear plants can produce power at about 3.5 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour (kwh), if their capacity is above 600 MW each," Soentono said.
State power distributor Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) at present spends about 6 U.S. cents to produce 1 kwh of electricity using oil.
On the nuclear road map, the government aims to reduce the usage of oil to produce energy, which stands currently at up to 55 percent, to between 10 percent and 15 percent by 2020.
Gas usage is targeted to rise from 31 percent this year to 39 percent in 2020 and coal from 11 percent to 38 percent. New and renewable sources are expected to rise from 0.2 percent currently to 4 percent in 2020.
The question of security has always caused great debate when considering plans to build power plants in the country.
The plan's detractors point to country's less-than-stellar safety standards and the Chernobyl power station meltdown in the Ukraine in 1986 where radiation poisoning killed 30 people at the time and continues to kill or deform hundreds of others.
Soentono said the technology had advanced greatly since Chernobyl and the project would be conducted with utmost care. "We are not building another Chernobyl," he said.
"Failure is not tolerated in nuclear plants. If the plant in Indonesia fails, plans to build plants all over the world may be dropped," he said.
If the history of nuclear power in this country is any indication, however, the nuclear naysayers should not lose any sleep. For more than 40 years, successive governments have talked up building nuclear power plants but none have ever been constructed.
Soentono said Indonesia had been conducting nuclear studies since the mid-1960s. A study to build a power plant was completed in 1986, but it did not materialize. Another one was updated in 1996, but was halted when the monetary crisis hit.
"We did another study using post-crisis data. It was completed in 2002," said Soentono.
To be able to start construction in 2010, the government has to get all required site permits by 2006. A tender to build the planned power plant is expected to commence in 2008.