Jakarta (VNA) – Indonesia’s Cesium-137 (Cs-137) Decontamination Task Force is accelerating the cleanup operation in industrial and residential areas of Cikande, Banten, by temporarily relocating 91 residents from the red zone.
Head of the Task Force’s Mitigation and Cs-137 Contamination Management Division Rasio Ridho Sani confirmed that 22 factories and 12 other sites had undergone decontamination after exposure to Cs-137 radioactive contamination.
Of the 22 factories affected by Cs-137 radiation, 21 have been successfully decontaminated.
He added that the decontamination process is expected to be completed by December at the latest.
The relocation process, he said, follows Radiation Safety Procedures and is directly supervised by radiation protection officers (PPR) and experts from the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and the Nuclear Energy Regulatory Agency (Bapeten).
For radiation safety, residents and their belongings are screened using radiation metre surveys. Once declared safe, health examinations are conducted at the Cikande Community Health Center, Sani noted.
The relocation aims to expedite the decontamination process in red-zone residential areas and ensure public health and safety.
Of the 12 locations found with Cesium-137 contamination, five have been fully decontaminated, while seven remain under treatment.
A total of 222.6 cubic metres, equivalent to 371 tonnes of decontaminated material, has been successfully transferred to interim storage, Sani added./.
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