01 December 2009: Jakarta Post
Until recently, Indonesia was expected to be the first country in Southeast Asia to generate electricity from nuclear power. With three nuclear research reactors in operation, a range of other nuclear-science facilities and a cadre of trained scientists and engineers, Indonesia has more nuclear-science expertise than any other member of ASEAN.
Local opposition in the Muria Peninsula has resulted in delays to the timetable that would have seen a nuclear power plant operating by 2016-2017. Thus, Vietnam, whose one-party state allows for less dissent, will almost certainly leapfrog Indonesia in introducing nuclear power.
But harnessing the atom is not an international competition. Indonesia's open and pluralistic society will likely ensure that when nuclear power is introduced - and I believe that it is a matter of when and not if - full attention will be given to seismic risks and potential terrorist threats as well as to the need for instilling a strong and enduring safety culture. An early November trip to Jakarta reinforced my optimism.
Given Jakarta's non-proliferation leadership, the dangers of non-peaceful use are much less of a cause for concern here than they are in some other nuclear-aspirant countries.
The nation's commitment to non-proliferation was further enhanced when Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda stated during his June visit to Washington that if the US ratified the CTBT, Indonesia would immediately follow suit. One wonders, though, why Indonesia cannot go ahead on its own, rather than waiting for others.
In any case, nuclear energy cannot be misused for nuclear weapons without either uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing, neither of which is necessary for countries that seek only to produce nuclear power. Indonesia has shown no concerted interest in these technologies. Using foreign fuel-cycle services to procure fuel and dispose of the by-product will be far less costly, in both economic and political terms, and will shorten the timeframe for bringing nuclear power on line.
There are other nuclear dangers, however, including how to safely dispose of spent fuel, a problem no country has yet to permanently solve. Countries newly entering the nuclear market may be more willing to depend entirely on foreign supply of enriched fuel if they also could rely on foreign disposition of their spent fuel.
Long-term storage of conditioned nuclear waste in an international repository would be the best solution, if the significant political hurdles in the way of creating such a repository could be overcome. Such a repository could also be used to dispose of long-lived radioactive wastes from research reactors and other nuclear applications.
Advantages of a multinational repository include economy of scale, collective savings, nonproliferation and security and the prospect for technology sharing. Finding a host country that is both suitable and willing is the greatest challenge. None to date have volunteered.
One alternative is to create a partnership to develop regional multinational waste-disposal facilities. By banding together on a waste-management solution, countries could minimize the costs and optimize nonproliferation, safety and security objectives.
Regional partners, who need not commit at the outset to hosting a multinational repository, should first explore the possibility of shared facilities, examining the legal, economic and technical issues, including transportation requirements.
They should then establish a set of technically based common criteria for excluding unsuitable areas within their respective countries. Only then should communities in non-excluded areas be invited to express interest on a voluntary, non-committal basis. This approach is being pursued in Europe
Until the political and technical challenges of building permanent international fuel repositories can be overcome, the countries that produce nuclear power and its unwanted by-products will have to rely on temporary storage of the spent fuel. About 40-50 years - the planned operating lifetime of many reactors - is an appropriate initial timeframe for interim storage facilities, but dry-cask storage is deemed safe for as long as 100 years.
During this time, it is possible that the technology may evolve in ways that make recycling of the recoverable plutonium in the spent fuel practical and free of proliferation risks. All options are thus kept open and the spent fuel is saved for its use as a future energy source.
Down the road, the successful introduction of an extra-national fuel-cycle facility serving Southeast Asia would potentially have benefits far beyond the regional benefits of spent-fuel management and nonproliferation of sensitive technologies.
It could create a useful model for emulation elsewhere and bring closer to realization outgoing IAEA Director-General ElBaradei's vision of making all sensitive nuclear facilities international, and thus bring closer as well the vision of a stable nuclear-weapons-free world in which no one country has an exclusive latent weapons break-out capability.
The writer is director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Program at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies and editor of the recently published IISS strategic dossier on Preventing Nuclear Dangers in Southeast Asia and Australasia.
