Experts from South Korea and Indonesia have begun a three-year feasibility study on using nuclear power to solve the country’s electricity woes despite the fears about Indonesia’s unstable seismic landscape.

The feasibility plan is being conducted by both Indonesian experts and Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, a unit of South Korea’s state-run monopoly Kepco. According to the head of Indonesia’s Nuclear Energy Development Centre, Arnold Soetrisnanto, “The study could lead to the revival of plans to construct a nuclear plant in central Java starting in 2010.”

The plant Soetrisnanto is alluding to is the still shelved Muria project, abandoned in 1997 due to community opposition and the Asian financial crisis, which helped kill all financing for the project that is now being seen as a possible solution to the country’s power woes.

Muria was a project opposed by the World Bank and was deemed impractical then. The proposed plant is also only a few hundred km away from the infamous Krakatoa volcano and many critics of the project question the viability of building a nuclear power plant so close to an unstable geological foundation.

Soetrisnanto deflected this argument, saying “In Japan they already have 58 nuclear power plants [and] the quakes in Japan are much more severe than on Java.”

The only thing that could now stop any plans to revive Muria is its price tag. A nuclear plant – going cheap – would still cost around US$12 billion.