Cooperation sought in nuclear plans

The government is considering offering incentives for regions that allow part of their area to be used as a site for nuclear power plants.

Evita H. Legowo, an expert adviser at the Energy and Resources Ministry, said the concept was being formulated by a working team for nuclear power plants under the ministry.

"Any regional administration that allows part of its area to be used for nuclear power plants would receive incentives. It could be that we build hospitals or schools for them," said Evita, who was speaking at a seminar about the investment climate in the energy and mining sector Wednesday.

She added that the concept was still just an idea among the team members and had been communicated verbally to the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

Evita said opposition from local communities had been a major problem in developing nuclear power plants.

One such project was the planned development of a nuclear power plant in Muria Peninsula in Central Java, which stalled because of community opposition.

"The government had invested a lot in this project, including creating a nuclear engineering major at the Gadjah Mada University. But, as the project has not made any progress, many of these nuclear engineers have to work in other fields," Evita said.

The Muria plant was expected to start operating in 2016 and to supply between 4,000 and 6,000 megawatts of electricity to Java and Bali.

Evita said cooperation with local governments in building nuclear power plants had been practiced in other nations, including France and Japan.

Indonesia needs 10 nuclear reactors, each of which has a capacity of 1,000 megawatts of electricity, she said.

"We will need about three power plant sites because each site could have three reactors producing about 4,000 megawatts."