Friday, 28 September, 2007

by Karen Michelmore
AAP

NORTHERN Australia would be at risk of nuclear fallout if Indonesia's proposed nuclear power station suffered a major failure, environmentalists have warned.

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said a university study 13 years ago - when Indonesia last raised the prospect of a nuclear power station - found the north of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland "would be at substantial risk of receiving radioactive fallout" in the event of a major reactor failure.

Indonesia's government is expected to make a final decision soon on whether it will pursue nuclear energy, as it grapples with surging energy needs.

It is looking at building up to four nuclear power plants on Central Java's Muria Peninsula to feed at least 4000 megawatts of electricity to heavily-populated Java Island, Bali and Madura.

Indonesia, which insists a decision is yet to be made, has said it would likely seek Australian uranium to feed the power station if it went ahead.

"We are obviously concerned about the project," ACF's anti-nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney said.

"Indonesia is extraordinarily populated, it's highly seismically active - nuclear energy is a high cost and high risk option.

"There are a whole range of environmental risks, but also security and proliferation risks.

"Nuclear facilities since September 2001 have been identified as credible terrorist targets".

He pointed to the Australian National University study in the early 1990s which found a major failure of the proposed nuclear reactor "could be a disaster for many countries in the region".

The study - An Analysis and Visualisation of the Risk Associated with the Potential Failure of Indonesian Nuclear Reactors - found that radioactive gases could reach Australia within a few days, particularly if the event occurred in summer.

"Potential impacts on northern Australia, of even a small release, could potentially be devastating to agricultural production and tourism, at least in the short term," the report said.

The Australia Institute has also expressed concern about the potential facility.

Institute executive director Dr Clive Hamilton said while the risk of an accident was very low, "a cloud of radiation" blowing over northern Australia would pose a severe danger to public safety.

He said while the ANU study was conducted 13 years ago, its results were still valid.

"The weather patterns haven't changed (since then), not markedly anyway," Dr Hamilton said.

"Certainly if there was a major accident in Java which occurred at a certain time of year, there's little doubt that Australia would be affected by the fallout.

"Australia's national interests are definitely involved in Indonesia's plan to build a nuclear power plant."

The institute, in a press release last year, noted that in 1994 the then Coalition opposition called on the Labor government to pressure Jakarta to cancel the planned nuclear facility, citing public safety concerns.

Australia's nuclear science chief Dr Ziggy Switkowski yesterday said he had no concerns about the safety of an Indonesian nuclear power plant, saying that in an earthquake he would rather be in a nuclear facility than any other power plant.

The world's biggest nuclear power facility, Japan's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant, was shutdown in July after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake rattled the area.