MB: No nuke plant in PD

SEREMBAN: Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan has denied that he wants the country’s first nuclear facility to be built in Port Dickson.

Mohamad, who was shocked when asked to respond to the claim, said he personally felt the resort town was not a practical site for the plant.

“This is news to me. Why would I want to lobby for the nuclear facility to be built in PD? We are working hard to make PD the top tourist destination in the country,” he said.

Several websites had been speculating on the site and one claimed that Mohamad had lobbied for Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak’s approval for the facility to be built in the resort town.

Port Dickson assemblyman M. Ravi said orang asli in Kg Bukit Kepong at KM23 of the Port Dickson-Pasir Panjang road had told him that they would have to make way for the project.

“There is a deep lake in the village and apparently that would make a good site for the plant.

“I have been told that some people have started clearing the land there and the villagers were told that it was for the construction of a power facility,” he said, adding that he did not have any proof of this.

On Aug 10, Malaysian Nuclear Agency director-general Datuk Dr Daud Mohamad said the country’s first nuclear power plant would be built on an uninhabited island, adding that the agency had studied five or six sites in the peninsula, of which one or two were islands.

Daud said construction of a 1,000MW nuclear power plant would cost between US$2bil (RM6.27bil) and US$3bil (RM9.41bil).

TheStar