Indonesian nuclear energy in Southeast Asia: A potential risk?
Indonesia, Southeast Asia's largest economy, plans to construct four nuclear reactors by 2025 to reduce its reliance on crude oil to create electricity.
According Soedyartomo Soentono, former chairman of National Nuclear Energy Agency, the first plant is to be set up by 2016 and the second the following year in Madura. The third and fourth reactors will eventually be completed by 2024.
After the recent hike in oil prices and the recent discovery that the oil fields in the peninsula are withering, there seems to be an urgent need for the peninsula to find alternate sources of energy. The target generation from nuclear power is approximately 4 percent of electricity by 2025.
Indonesia’s current supply of electricity cannot match its current demand and to solve this problem in the long run, the government is planning to build four nuclear reactors to satisfy the projected increase in economic growth. It seems that the nuclear threat will not remain in East Asia eternally that it will eventually have huge implications for Southeast Asia.
The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty signed by all ASEAN members prevents Indonesia or anyone else to house weapons of mass destruction but will Indonesia be able to create nuclear energy without any risks for its neighbours?
A catastrophe in any nuclear reactors will have cataclysmic effects on the whole region and the environmental destruction will be unprecedented. Is Indonesia ready to have such facilities? Does it have the infrastructural capacity to maintain and secure the nuclear plants? With a growing problem of terrorism in the region, what will be the implications of such a plan in the future? What do you think?
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