Jakartass Home thoughts from abroad. Alien thoughts from home.

In June, SBY told us that a nuclear power plant is not a priority.

Then last week Vice President Boediono described the notion as a dream.

“We will continue trying. Someday, somewhere we will build the nuclear power plant …. [even though] … I know there is a risk. But there is always a risk. Coal poses a risk, and natural gas, as well.”

The risk of radiation being carried by winds to Australia in the event of a Chernobyl-style disaster is outlined in this document.

A leak of radiation would possibly be caused by an earthquake or volcanic eruption, as recognised by Rinaldy Dalimi, a member of National Energy Council, who earlier this month said that nuclear-based power plants are unsafe because the nation lies on the earthquake-prone ring of fire.

What is more, Indonesia does not have a plentiful source of uranium yet Australia, a country having a high amount of uranium supply, … refuses to build a nuclear-based power plant.

Perhaps more importantly, Indonesia has in store renewable energy, which can replace the role of nuclear-based power plants. Indonesia can make use of the potentials kept in crude palm oil, sea water, and geothermal. And, I would add, solar power.

And the most important point he made was that the country has yet to prepare the technology appropriate for such power plants.

Anybody who has spent any amount of time in Indonesia will be aware of any number of infrastructure ‘problems’. Roads collapse and are inadequately repaired, trains regularly derail, and floods are deemed unavoidable.

So, why the flurry of news items, a drip feed about a notional dream?

The latest is the publication of a survey from Indonesia’s National Nuclear Energy Agency (BATAN) who say that 58% of people polled support the construction of a nuclear power plant in the region on the grounds that it can improve the stability of the region’s energy supply.

Just 3000 people were polled in 22 areas of Java-Bali during May and June. The highest level of support came from NGOs (76%), members of Parliament (74%) and government officials (70.5%). The latter two categories are not surprising given their penchant for riding the gravy train. Given that NGO’s need government ‘permission’ to exist, they too may have vested, financial interests at stake.

Something that Rinaldy Dalimi did not mention is that a potential disaster at a nuclear power plant would be probably be caused by ‘human error’, an act of stupidity in other words, something that in this age of reformasi many Indonesian are prone to demonstrate. For example, seventy percent of the 1,700 road fatalities last year in Jakarta were seemingly caused by drivers using their handphones. What is worse is that the guardians of civil society, the police take umbrage when informed that what they’ve done is wrong.

Stupidity is not about low intelligence but is caused by inflexible thinking. There are numerous examples of clever people who do stupid things – even me.

What is needed here is a Flexible Thinking Forum providing practical tools, tips, ideas and inspiration of what to do when you are faced with examples of bureaucracy gone mad, daft decisions, or inflexible ‘jobsworths’.

Better yet, such a forum would be able offer alternative solutions, perhaps through examples from elsewhere.

For example, did you know that last year (2009) half of the new power generation capacity built in the U.S. was in the form of renewable energy? In Europe, renewables accounted for 60 percent of new power generation capacity. Globally, renewables now comprise 25 percent of power capacity and last delivered 18 percent of the world’s electricity.

For the many rural villages in Indonesia yet to be connected to the national grid, especially in the eastern provinces, wind power could be a solution, as is being considered in India.

Several thousand villages across India are not connected to the national grid. In those rural areas, one small wind turbine could generate enough electricity to cover the basic needs of a home, like cooling and lighting. Localized, distributed wind power would also carry the advantage of not needing expansive transmission lines to carry electricity from centralized power plants to remote villages.

There is however one problem that no flexible thinker has yet solved and possibly never will. It lies at the heart of my objection to the nuclear power industry: not one country knows how to permanently dispose of nuclear waste. A typical 1,000 MW power plant, such as proposed for Indonesia, produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel every year which needs to be reprocessed.

According to the nuclear industry’s own website, there are just five reprocessing plants in the world, in France, the UK, Russia, Japan and India, but significantly, none in the USA.

Reprocessing reduces the volume but there remain significant amounts of long-lived fission products, Tc-99 which has a half-life of 220,000 years and I-129 which has a half-life of 17 million years. Then there are the most troublesome transuranic elements which are Pu-239 with a half life of 24,000 years and Np-237 with a half-life of two million years.

And Indonesia wants to add to a stockpile of waste which will outlive the human race? Obviously the apologists are among the most uncaring – and stupid – this world has ever produced.

Here’s a question for these individuals who cannot keep trains on their tracks, who cannot maintain roads from one rainy season to the next, who can’t stop ships from sinking and who cannot eradicate terrorism: what do you propose to do with the 27 tonnes of radioactive waste? And how would you get it from the power plant to one of the five reprocessing plants.