Indonesia Declines Russian Offer To Set Up Nuclear Power Plants

Indonesia has said it is 'not ready yet' to take up Russian offer to set up nuclear power plants on turnkey basis.

"We have told them that we are not ready yet. We need to raise public awareness, which takes time,” said Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan on Thursday, following a meeting with Rosatom representatives at his office in Jakarta.

Russian Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation has offered to develop turnkey nuclear power plants in Indonesia. The offer also says that nuclear power plants would be built in regions where there is no threat of earthquake, such as Bangka in Sumatra and East Kalimantan, Luhut was quoted as saying by Jakarta Post Tuesday.

“Even though Rosatom is able to built power plants that had capacities of more than 1,000 megawatts, we need to review everything first,” he said.

Even if we do agree to Rosatom’s offer, the process will take 10 years, so we have not decided on anything yet,” Luhut said.

The state owned electricity firm PLN’s recent Electricity Procurement Plan (RUPT) states that Nuclear energy will be the last resort for electricity procurement provided that renewable sources from water, wind, geothermal, solar and biomass failed to meet the target.

As Indonesia is an archipelagic country, PLN also makes specific note of the possible use of small modular reactors, which can produce up to 300 megawatts of electricity, for certain islands.

Further study would be needed as small modular reactors were not commercially available, he added.