Nuclear reactor plan on shaky ground

October 14, 2007

IT WAS, in a way, a case of taking the mountain to Muhammad - the mountain being a dormant volcano that looms over the planned site of Indonesia's first nuclear power station.

Last month, 100 clerics and scholars from one of the world's largest Muslim organisations, in the heart of the country with the world's largest Muslim community, met near Mount Muria in Java for two days of deliberations.

The unprecedented gathering considered Indonesian Government plans to build four nuclear power plants at the foot of Mount Muria, on the world's most populous island.

It also sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" that is prone to devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The scholars, members of the 30-million strong Nahdlatul Ulama, met in the town of Jepara, where they heard from the Research and Technology Minister, the ANU-educated engineer Kusmayanto Kadiman, who urged support for nuclear power.

So did the head of the national atomic energy agency and other government experts.

They heard a different story from non-government groups, environmentalists, and representatives from the village of Balong, the proposed site of the nuclear plant.

At the end of their deliberations, drawing on Islamic traditions of jurisprudence, the scholars issued a fatwa, a religious legal edict, declaring the Muria plans haram - forbidden.

They declared Islam neither forbids nor recommends nuclear power. Their edict, instead, was specific to Muria, where they ruled the likely benefits were outweighed by the potential damage. Their main concern was safety.

"As far as we can tell, it's the first time there's been any mainstream Islamic expression of opposition to nuclear power, anywhere," says Richard Tanter, an Australian academic who observed the gathering.

Despite the fatwa, and a chorus of other critics, the Government is pressing ahead. It wants to let the first tender next year, with construction to start in 2010, and the first station operating by 2016.

Unease over the plan is not confined to Indonesia. Its neighbours are watching closely.
Australia's position is ambivalent. Indonesia is a potential market for Australian uranium and under the 2006 Lombok Agreement the two countries are committed to peaceful nuclear co-operation.
At the same time, Australia is concerned about potential risks, with studies showing a disaster in an Indonesian reactor would send massive fallout across northern Australia.

Earlier plans by Jakarta to go down the nuclear road were finally killed off by the financial crisis that brought down the Soeharto regime in 1998.

Now it's back on the agenda, backed by powerful and inter-connected business and political interests, including Vice-President Jusuf Kalla. Proponents argue Indonesia needs to diversify sources of energy for its 224 million people, more than half of whom are crammed onto Java, an island roughly half the size of Victoria.

Electricity demand is growing by about 10 per cent a year, while supplies of oil, its main energy source, are dwindling.

Indonesia has the backing of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, whose director, Dr Mohamed El Baradei, endorsed the plans on a visit to Jakarta last December. He pointed out that Indonesia was a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and was committed to safeguards.

Global warming and the need to cut carbon emissions are also being used in support of the nuclear option - although most of Indonesia's emissions, the world's third highest, come from clearing and burning forests.

Government experts insist the Muria site is stable and that modern reactors are earthquake proof.
Such arguments have not silenced opponents, who point out that only last year an earthquake in southern Java killed more than 5000 people.

Critics also point to Indonesia's poor safety record in industry and transport, a lack of transparency in Government decision-making and the potential for corruption in a project worth about $US10 billion ($A11.1 billion).

Japanese and South Korean companies are keen for the contract. The Indonesian firm Medco Energi Internasional, which has links to Vice-President Kalla, has already signed a preliminary deal with Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co Ltd to build the plant. Details of the deal are secret, adding to unease in a country where corruption remains endemic.

While the Government has decentralised power to provinces, the nuclear plant remains the last of the Soeharto-era big projects, imposed from above.

If it goes ahead, the local administration will have little say and no capacity to manage it, says Dr Tanter, senior research associate with the Nautilus Institute, a think tank that focuses on security and sustainability.

"At the local level the impact would be like a kid playing in the middle of a freeway with an 18-wheeler barrelling down on top of them," he says.

Safety is it at the heart of public anxiety, according to Rizal Sukma of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Jakarta think tank.

"To be precise, there is strong doubt - even distrust - that whoever administers the nuclear plant will have the ability and absolute commitment to ensure the safety of a nuclear plant," he wrote in The Jakarta Post.

This doubt is shared by Indonesia's near neighbours, who already resent the choking haze they endure each year from the burning of Indonesia's forests.

At a seminar in Jakarta last month on energy and nuclear safety, Dr Sukma was joined by Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, in declaring that the nuclear option was a regional issue.

"In addition to harm at the local and national level, nuclear energy plants can potentially cause trans-boundary harm to neighbouring states," they said.

The potential harm was highlighted by research by ANU experts, who warned in a 1998 report that a failure in a reactor on Java "could be a disaster" for northern Australia, Papua New Guinea and South-East Asia.

A failure during the summer monsoon would send radioactive gas across northern Australia within days, the report said. The north of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland would be at "substantial risk" of receiving potentially devastating fallout.

Critics of the Indonesian plans stress there is no evidence Jakarta wants to develop nuclear weapons. But some observers do see a long-term risk of nuclear weapons proliferation in the Indonesian project.

What they fear is an "A.Q. Khan scenario" - a reference to the founder of Pakistan's nuclear program who set up a secret network to supply nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

The fear held by some US analysts and officials is that a group of Indonesian technical experts could form a similar network, outside the control of the Jakarta Government and working with experts from Iran, which has launched a diplomatic offensive aimed at building ties with Indonesian nuclear researchers.

This is a nightmare scenario for Australia, given the mutual suspicion that complicates relations between the two countries.

This suspicion has been compounded by Prime Minister John Howard's call for a "full-blooded debate" on Australia developing its own nuclear industry, and his refusal to rule out uranium enrichment.

"The consequences of Indonesia and Australia pursuing their somewhat non-rational approaches to the nuclear fuel cycle could have very negative consequences for people who are already suspicious of each other," says Dr Tanter.

Even so, he says climate change and the nuclear issue present an opportunity for greater co-operation between environmentalists, scientists and non-government groups in the two countries.

"These are issues where Australia and Indonesia have common cause, where it's in our shared interests to encourage both governments toward less risky, less threatening energy alternatives. We are in the same boat on this one," he says.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/10/13/1191696239293.html