Nuclear energy is not an Indonesian first option when it comes to finding new sources of energy, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said here on Sunday.
The president made the statement after reading out several points from a meeting with all ASEAN leaders in the the 18th ASEAN Summit at the Jakarta Convention Center (JCC) in May 7-8.
"In view of the catastrophe that struck Jaspan in its Fukushima power plant recently, all the parties concerned had been urged to conduct more research of the advantages and disadvantages of developing a nuclear power in their country. For Indonesia, we prefer other energy resources, not nuclear energy," the president said.
Yudhoyono said while some circles argued that nuclear power is a strategic long-term solution to new energy resources, others believed that it is better to use other resources of power. But one thing is sure, president pointed out, all ASEAN leaders had agreed to reduce the region’s dependence on fossil fuel.
In March 11, 2011, Japan was devastated by a 9,0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of people. The disaster also caused damage to the Fukushima power plant near the sea.
The atomic plant, with its reactor cooling system knocked out, had a series of explosions which caused a radiation leakage into the air, ground and sea in the world`s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in Russia 25 years ago.
The local government had imposed a no-go zone of 20 kilometers (12 miles) around the plant, giving legal weight to an exclusion zone for fears of the effects of long-term exposure to radiation on residents.
More than 85,000 people have moved to shelters from areas around the plant, including from a wider 30-kilometer zone, where people were first told to stay indoors and later urged to leave.
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