Let people decide on nuclear plants: Environmentalists

Let people decide on nuclear plants: Environmentalists

JAKARTA (JP): Environmentalists pressed their demand yesterday that the government let the public decide whether Indonesia should or should not build nuclear reactors.

Activists from the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) and the Indonesian Anti-Nuclear Society (MAN) marched to the House of Representatives to make their demand heard.

"The decision whether or not to go ahead with the construction of nuclear power plants must be made by the people, not the government," Walhi's executive director Sukri Saat told House Commission X, which is responsible for environmental affairs.

The delegation was met by the commission's environmental working group, led by legislator Muhammad Muas of the Golkar faction.

Muhammad expressed the view that the people should be thoroughly informed about both the positive and negative aspects of nuclear power.

Despite fierce objections from conservationists and others, the government insists that a multi-billion-dollar nuclear power project will go ahead.

President Soeharto said early this month that the use of nuclear power plants in Indonesia might be unavoidable in the future, as the country struggles to meet its ever-increasing domestic energy needs.

Soeharto said that the government was aware that the use of nuclear energy still entailed grave risks and that, therefore, the people needed to be thoroughly prepared for the nuclear program.

Chief of the National Nuclear Power Agency (BATAN) Djali Ahimsa said last month that nuclear power was the most reliable source for the 27,000 megawatts of electricity needed in Java and Bali. To satisfy the demand, he said, Indonesia would need 12 nuclear reactors.

The government hopes that the construction of the first reactor will begin next year in Ujungwatu village in Jepara, near Mount Muria in Central Java. The first power plant is expected to go into operation in 2003, with a generating capacity of about 800 megawatts.

The government has already commissioned a Japanese consultancy firm, Newjec Inc., to conduct a feasibility study on Indonesia's first nuclear power plant.

Iwan Kurniawan, a nuclear expert who took part in yesterday's protest, said the Indonesia's nuclear power agency had been biased in the information it given to the people about nuclear energy.

"BATAN has only provided the positive aspects of nuclear power to the people and often hidden the negative ones," he said.

He said he was doubtful that Indonesia was ready for nuclear power. He pointed out that the Chernobyl tragedy in the former Soviet Union on April 26, 1986, had occurred as a result of carelessness and a lack of knowledge about safety.

"We still lack nuclear experts and we cannot construct the nuclear plants without other countries' help," he said.

Iwan said that leaked radiation took hundreds of years to disappear and that there was currently no cure for the illnesses it causes.

Muhammad Muas said the environmentalists' petition would be discussed during the House's upcoming hearings with relevant government officials, including those from with BATAN.

The environmentalists yesterday also took their protest to the Golkar faction over the banning of a seminar they had planned to hold last week.

"We want a free debate to get as much input as possible about the government's plan to construct the nuclear power plants," Sukri said, adding that they would follow every official procedure to hold the gathering.

Ali Mursalam of the Golkar faction said he would ask the Ministry of Home Affairs why it refused to issue the recommendation necessary for a permit to be issued for last week's planned meeting.(imn)