Nuclear power debate should involve public
JAKARTA (JP): Debates on whether the government should go ahead with its plan to build a nuclear power plant should include a well-informed public, which requires responsible media coverage, scholars said yesterday.
"Nuclear technology has a future but the cost and benefit that are obvious, as well as hidden, should be equally weighed" before a country decides to go forward with the plan, said Sharon Friedman, director of the Science and Environmental Writing Program at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
Discussing reporting on environmental risks at The Jakarta Post, Friedman said that controversy over nuclear waste disposal, which is radioactive, continues in the United States.
"It has been going on for 20 years, and we have not yet found what should we do with the nuclear waste," she said.
Other reasons have also forestalled the U.S. government in its push toward utilizing nuclear power as a source of energy, including the hazard to people's health, costly expenditure and traumatic experiences of past catastrophes, she added.
"People's attitudes toward using nuclear power change when they remember past catastrophes of the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl," she said.
The National Atomic Energy Agency (Batan) hopes to build the first of several nuclear power plants in 1988 or 1999, pending the results of a study of a site near Mount Muria, 440 kilometers east of Jakarta.
Another site being considered in Ujung Lemahabang on the Muria Peninsula of Central Java is located near hospitals, communication facilities, housing and transportation.
Kenneth Friedman, a communication consultant and a part-time professor at the university, suggested journalists seek reliable independent sources who know enough about the subject. Such sources will help journalists relay accurate information to the public, he said.
Knowledgeable journalists will know what hides behind the complicated technical terms used by experts, he said.
Chief of state-owned electricity company PLN, Djiteng Marsudi, said earlier that nuclear power is unnecessary since coal and geothermal steam abound and are equally feasible options.
"A nuclear plant would make us dependent on other countries because uranium, the raw material for the plant, would have to be imported," he said.
Batan's chief, Djalil Ahimsa, said that nuclear power will be necessary if Indonesia is to meet the increasing demand for electricity in the foreseeable future. Djalil once cited areas around Timika in Irian Jaya as possible dump sites for nuclear waste.
Djalil shrugged off possible problems arising from the project, such as the repayment of loans taken out to build a nuclear plant. "They're none of my business. Besides, I'll probably be dead when problems arise," Djalil was quoted by Kompas daily as saying earlier this year.
The House of Representatives is deliberating a government- sponsored bill on nuclear power which deals with ways of managing nuclear reactors in Indonesia. Many people have protested against the bill. (14)