House to pass nuclear bill by the end of this month

House to pass nuclear bill by the end of this month

JAKARTA (JP): The House of Representatives will pass the
controversial bill on nuclear power in its plenary meeting
scheduled for Feb. 26, a legislator said yesterday.

Muhammad Buang of the United Development Party faction, who
was involved in the deliberations of the bill introduced in
January last year, said that House approval of the bill "would
hopefully allay public concerns over the possibility of a nuclear
accident.

"The law won't be able to eliminate all risks, but I am sure
that if the law is properly implemented, the possibility of
accidents will be minimized," he said.

Buang did not elaborate on how the House members managed to
break the deadlock in the deliberations caused by some
legislators' refusal to comply with a Dec. 12 deadline imposed on
them by the government. He did not explain, either, how the
legislators settled differences over several crucial issues,
including the establishment of a body to monitor the operation of
the planned nuclear plant.

Buang, however, said that the legislators had managed to add
several articles on plant safety to the bill. These cover, among
other things, the questions of the transportation of nuclear
waste and of manpower, which Buang said were crucial.

The bill, should it come into effect, will require any plan to
establish a nuclear power plant to go through four stages of
supervision and control. If a state agency wishes to construct a
plant, the plan should first be subjected to scrutiny from a
supervisory body that will have to be established by the
government.

The public will also be able to control the performance of the
supervisory body through an independent advisory body, to be
called the "Nuclear Power Supervisory Council" and consisting of
experts and community leaders.

"The Council will function in ways similar to the National
Commission on Human Rights. It will be founded through a
presidential decree," Buang said.

Next, any plan for a nuclear plant would also have to be
approved by the House of Representatives.

Buang said the bill has placed safety as the utmost
consideration. "The question of safety should be above any
political or economic interests," he said.

He also said the House would have to be consulted when the
government discusses the question of "sustainable storage" for
the nuclear waste.

Finally, the bill strives to regulate that any decisions made
on nuclear power plants should be in accordance with the
international conventions on nuclear plants that the country has
ratified, he said.

The document also prohibits dumping of foreign nuclear waste
in Indonesia. "We need to state this clearly. Otherwise, we don't
know, there could be countries wishing to do so," he said.

Reaction

An environmental organization demanded yesterday that the
House recant its approval of the bill. Angela Hindiarti of the
Indonesian Forum of Environment (Walhi) said the House should
first allow the public to contribute ideas for the document.

"From the outset the public has been excluded from
deliberation on the bill, especially people living near the site
where the government proposes to build a nuclear plant," she
said.

The government has already conducted feasibility studies to
build a nuclear power plant on the Muria Peninsula in Central
Java.

Walhi is against the bill on the grounds it was a
retrospective act, drafted merely to provide a legal basis for
the Muria plant.

"A new document on nuclear energy should be drafted, one which
includes people's aspirations," she said.

Late last month, 25 environmental organizations made the same
appeal to the House of Representatives, charging that the bill
was concocted only to legitimize the planned plant.

Besides Walhi, the other signatories included the Indonesian
Antinuclear Society, the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid
Institute and the International NGO Forum on Indonesian
Development.

The critics have repeatedly expressed their objections to the
planned nuclear plant, saying they doubted Indonesian experts
would be able to handle nuclear accidents and that the scheme was
just the ambition of the powerful few.

The organization requested that more time be provided to
review the bill's basic aspects and to allow a larger segment of
the public to provide input to reflect the people's aspirations,
not only the representation of interests by the minority in
power. (08)