Museum on Volcanoes opens on slopes of Mt. Batur, Bali

May 21st 2007

Bisnis Indonesia reports that Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, recently inaugurated a Museum on Volcanoes on the slope of Mt. Batur, an active volcano in the district of Bangli, Bali. Here visitors may learn how volcanoes erupt, and children may play at interactive computer games animations.

Balidiscovery.com adds that of the 129 volcanoes found in Indonesia, in the so-called Ring of Fire, 80 are active with the potential of exploding at any time in the future. Of the 80 active volcanoes, 64 are considered sufficiently dangerous to surrounding population and are under continuous monitoring by the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (BMG)

Construction on the museum was started in 2004, and is to be developed in three phases, to be completed in 2009. The first phase required a budget of Rp. 21 billion of a total construction cost of Rp.  36 billion.