THE government has started relocating residents living in areas surrounding the Modern Cikande Industrial Estate, a site found to have been contaminated with radioactive Caesium-137, a spokesman said.
The government initiated the effort after detecting high levels of Caesium-137, a man-made radionuclide, at the sprawling industrial zone near the capital.
“At this first stage, we are allocating 19 families with a total of 63 individuals. Why now? Because it’s time to clean up their houses from contamination,” said Bara Hasibuan, spokesman for a specially set up task force.
In the next stage, the task force aims to move another eight families with a total of 28 people by next week, he added.
The task force also said it had finished the decontamination process at 20 out of the 22 facilities at the industrial estate that contained traces of Caesium-137.
The contamination was first detected in a batch of shrimp shipped to the United States in August by a local company.
The United States has also imposed new certification requirements for imports of shrimp and spices from Indonesia.
Caesium-137 commonly enters the environment as a result of past nuclear tests or accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima, but it is also used in some industrial applications like oil well logging.
Indonesia currently has no nuclear weapons or power plants; however, it does have several small-scale nuclear research facilities. — Reuters
