ENERGY Secretary Alfonso Cusi last week announced that President Rodrigo Duterte had given him the go-signal to look into the feasibility of powering up the 620-megawatt Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, which had been mothballed over safety concerns during the late 1980s.
The plant, which has never been operated, has cost taxpayers some $2.3 billion, and about P50 million a year to maintain.
As the government’s top official on energy concerns, Cusi has made no bones about his support for commissioning the BNPP and for pursuing nuclear energy as a source of power.
In making the announcement, Cusi seemed to contradict the President’s recent statement that he did not want to pursue nuclear power during his term.
“He did not change his mind. I explained to him what the country needs,” Cusi said of the President.
“I gave him assurance that we will not do it recklessly…We are going to follow the strict measures of the [International Atomic Energy Agency],” Cusi said.
The President’s ambivalence seems to be emblematic of how divisive the issue of nuclear power continues to be.
On the one side, there is a strong, pro-nuclear lobby led by the likes of former Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco, who argue rather convincingly that nuclear energy is cheap, safe, and more environmentally sound than other sources such as coal.
On the other hand, there is great public concern over the safety of nuclear power, in the wake of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
There is also a strong anti-nuclear lobby from the left that argues that commissioning the BNPP would be unsafe, expensive and unwise.
Outside of a few studies, little has been done to erase the public perception that thousands of defects had been found in the BNPP, or that it was built near an active fault line, making it vulnerable to earthquake damage.
Little, too, has been done to adequately address the problem of radioactive waste, and how this can be stored in an environmentally sound manner that protects nearby communities from accidents—or even terrorist attacks.
Moreover, politics has made it almost impossible to assess the pros and cons objectively. Built during the Marcos years, the BNPP was mothballed by President Corazon Aquino, who took power in 1986 following the ouster of President Ferdinand Marcos. The Chernobyl disaster in Russia just a few months later sealed the BNPP’s fate—and the overpriced power plant was held up as an example of corruption during the Marcos years.
Interest in the BNPP revived in 2007, however, when the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute asked the IAEA for help in a feasibility study on rehabilitating the plant.
The National Power Corp., which owns the plant, tapped the Korean Electric Power Co. to assess the viability of using the aging plant to generate electricity.
The study concluded that it would take $1 billion spread over four years to restore the BNPP, and that 80 percent of the plant and equipment needed overhauling, while the rest had to be replaced.
Since then, it has been a back and forth between those who support opening the plant and those who oppose it.
The one thing that both sides seem to agree upon is the need for an independent, science-based review of the BNPP, one that is removed from politics and vested interests.
Senate minority leader Ralph Recto is correct when he says that any decision to open the plant should be based on an unassailable study whose conclusion is that the moribund plant can be safely resurrected beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It should be a science-based decision, and not because someone has a light bulb moment and then immediately orders that the plant be switched on,” Recto said.
In this regard, the IAEA recommendations from 2008 might be instructive. The technical evaluation, the IAEA team said, must be done by a group of nuclear power experts. The reported Korean seller of the equipment should never be allowed to certify its own product.
Lastly, the government should encourage experts to openly share their views on the issue. There should be no blackout on informed discussion.
That certainly sounds like a good starting point.
