Ee-inche is probably the way to pronounce the acronym of the 1st Indonesia International Nuclear Expo. You may like to know that this is being held this week at the Jakarta Convention Centre (JCC), where JakJazz and the Jakarta Book Fair are held every year.
Ee-inche is being held from the 3rd to 5th Dec., and will be in Assembly Halls 1, 2 and 3. I'd like to tell you more but googling has only got me the JCC website and What's On Jakarta?. The latter site has links to 'details'. Unfortunately these merely load the page you start at.
There's little point in me reiterating my anti-nuclear stance. If you want it in full then type 'nuclear power' in the search box to the right.But it may be worth pointing out that countries such as the UK dependent to a large degree on nuclear power for their energy consumption needs are faced, as ever, with the need to decommission their old plants nearing retirement.
Decommissionning is very expensive; the current estimate by the United Kingdom's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is that it will cost at least £70 billion* to decommission the existing United Kingdom nuclear sites; this takes no account of what will happen in the future. Also, due to the latent radioactivity in the reactor core, the decommissioning of a reactor is a slow process which has to take place in stages; the plans of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for decommissioning reactors have an average 50 year time frame. The long time frame makes reliable cost estimates extremely difficult. Excessive cost overruns are not uncommon even for projects done in a much shorter time.
*Excited AzoCleanTech.com, senses "significant opportunities for specialist companies from North America who have taken part in similar Department of Energy decommissioning projects and are now seeking to transfer this experience to new international markets."
Indonesia does not, as yet, have a nuclear power plant. That's all for the good, because seemingly everything is planned here wiith short-term objectives and this does not bode well for an industry which will outlive humanity. The UK, whose Prime Minister Gordon Brown is a known supporter of the nuclear industry, has been warned that if current plans to build more nuclear plants to replace and supplement existing plants go ahead, there may be a need to build not one, but two, waste repositories at a minimum of £12 billion each.
It's worth bearing in mind that as years go by, new problems and inflation combine to escalate costs.
I hope the delegates to Ee-inche enjoy the seminars along with the free lunches and snacks. I trust that they appreciate that there's no way that a country which cannot manage its banks or transport systems can hope to manage, let alone afford, a nuclear industry.
