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n his very readable paper, The State and the Reactor: Nuclear Politics in Post-Suharto Indonesia (2010) (http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/sulfikar/nuclearpolitics.pdf), Sulfikar Amir analyzes how technology is particularly suited to serve the political interests of those who seek to control other groups or to establish a political order maintaining the status quo.

B.J. Habibie, who holds some 46 patents, is the obvious example of this. In 1974, having returned from his studies and work as an aeronautical engineer in Germany, his mentor, President Soeharto, appointed him CEO of state-owned enterprise PT Industri Pesawat Terbang Nurtanio (IPTN) in Bandung. Following the Asian economic crisis (krismon), in 2000 the aircraft maker was restructured and renamed PT Dirgantara Indonesia (Indonesian Aerospace Inc.).

In that year, Habibie was already an ex-President.

And just in July 2011, the government said that it would inject Rp 2 trillion ($234 million) into Indonesian Aerospace to keep the debt-ridden firm afloat. This is in addition to its unpaid debt to the government of Rp 1.1 trillion.

However, that’s peanuts compared to the cost of building and maintaining a nuclear power plant, cost that must ultimately be borne by the state. In the US, the upfront capital investment required to build a 1,400 MW plant is currently about $2 billion.

Quoted in The Jakarta Post in early July, Bangka Belitung Governor Eko Maulana Ali said: “To build a 1,000 MW power plant, we need approximately Rp 35 trillion. To build two power plants, Rp 70 trillion is needed. The government is not concerned on the cost as many foreign investors are ready to support the project.”

Presumably Governor Eko is talking up a higher budget because of expected inflation and the usual over-run costs. As for the foreign investors, among others, interest has been shown in the past few years by South Korea’s state-run Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Mitsubishi of Japan and Russia’s electricity company RAO UES.

The latter is interesting in that in 2006 Gorontalo Governor Fadel Muhamad — now the Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries — had a wizard scheme to overcome Indonesia’s energy crisis. He announced a deal with Raoues to build Indonesia’s first nuclear power plant on a ship floating off the shore of Gorontalo.

Among the many other factors which noone seems keen to talk about, such as the lack of highly qualified and experienced staff, there is the small matter of the fuel, uranium. It is estimated that Indonesia has reserves of 53,000 tons in West Kalimantan and Bangka Belitung. Each 1,000 MW plant would require 200 tons per annum, which would mean that if all the reserves were extracted, purified and transported to plants, they would be able to operate for 66 years,

For further plants to come on stream, uranium would have to be imported, yet it is estimated that world reserves will only last for another 42 years. So, the outlook for the nuclear industry worldwide is limited. And then must be added the costs of decommissioning and the yet to be resolved problem of the radioactive waste which will remain lethal for 100,000 years.

Back in March, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Agency (BATAN) Ferhat Aziz stated that “BATAN has sufficient human resources to support the development of a nuclear power plant”.

That leads to the question of how he defines “human resources” because he then went on to say that “the project would not go ahead anytime soon because there were so many factors to take into consideration — such as the environment, climate, geology and geography and including finding a location not prone to tsunamis, volcanic eruptions or earthquakes”.

Presumably there are no environmentalists, climatologists, geologists or map readers on the BATAN staff, thus putting the lie to his initial statement.

There’s also the small matter of not having enough plumbers. In researching his paper Sulfikar Amir used the toilets a few times at the BATAN head office in Jakarta, and observed that “the toilet was not as clean as those found in five-star hotels, and the sink was leaking.”

The same could be said about my house, but I’m not planning to develop a nuclear power plant any time soon.

There also can’t be anyone with sufficient knowledge to maintain a website because the BATAN Radioactive Waste Technology Center webpage (http://www.batan.go.id/ptlr/en/) has been “down for maintenance” for at least four years.

Most of us presume that the official spokesperson of whatever organization or person is authorized to inform the public, via the media, of the “official line”. However, BATAN is far from transparent in its dealings.

On July 4, 2001, BATAN head Hudi Hastowo told reporters that Bangka Belitung was considered to be the most suitable site for a nuclear power plant, due to geological and geographical reasons — there’s a granite sub-stratum and the sea is relatively shallow so, he says, tsunamis are unlikely, but not impossible.

He then went on to say, as quoted in the Post, that BATAN finished feasibility and site studies in Bangka Belitung in January and they had planned to announce the results of the bidding to build two power plants in March.

“However, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster on March 11 created political and social situations that were inconvenient for announcing the results.”

Thanks for the honesty Pak Hudi, but authorizing Ferhat Aziz to cloud the issue is a strong indication that your organization is not to be trusted.

The writer is co-author of Culture Shock! Jakarta.