Indonesia moves residents near site contaminated with Caesium 137, task force says

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JAKARTA (Reuters) -The Indonesian 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 told Reuters on Friday.

The effort was initiated after Indonesia detected high levels of Caesium-137, a man-made radionuclide, at the sprawling industrial zone near the capital Jakarta.

“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 the special task force set up to handle the issue.

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 imposed new certification requirements for imports of shrimp and spices from Indonesia.

Caesium-137 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 has no nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants.

(Reporting by Dewi Kurniawati; Editing by David Stanway)