Harnessing the Secret of the Stars To Light Up the Darkness

The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is once more in the news. Some background is over at  Odious Debts Dot Org which still has online a Commentary of mine published in 2002 by PDI  examining the bitter fruit and its rotten root.  But today Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuanco, author of a bill to rehabilitate and commission BNPP for electric power production is facing opposition from an unusual trio.  Led by Cardinal Sin’s once young protege and totum-factotum,  Bishop Socrates Villegas of Balanga, Bataan — three Catholic Bishops are objecting to the rehabilitation of Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. have mounted substantial objections based on economics, safety, and environmental concerns.

The good Bishop Socrates’ first argument is pure pop economics:

“With so much to be spent for its rehabilitation, is this the time to revive this folly of Marcos corruption? Could the money not be used for more urgent needs of the poor like schools and hospitals?”

Considering that the Filipino people paid 2.2 billion US dollars for BNPP and got not a single kilowatt of electricity out of it, it only makes sense to get something out of the deal.  The good Bishop’s argument belongs to the inventory of fallacious populism that holy men are evidently not above resorting to, just as much as unholy men like Erap, or even Ferdinand Marcos, who bought one nuclear reactor for the price of two, in the Mother of All Kickback Schemes by a Filipino President. Please note that a nearly identical  ”twin sister reactor” from Westinghouse, installed in the mid-1980s and still operational in South Korea, paid for itself in energy savings within seven years. According to Rep. Mark Cojuanco, at about P1 to P2 per kilowatt hour, costs to rehab BNPP could be recovered in 5 to 10 years.  Also it is the fastest, greenest way to add over 600 megawatts of generating capacity to the Philippine electric grid, and one that could directly service the National Capitol region.

The next argument of the good Bishop Socrates Villegas is about operational safety…

“What was not safe 30 years ago cannot become safe by a mere congressional act. We want progress but not at the risk of human life and safety,” he said.“How can a 30-year-old nuclear power plant which has never been operated, which has an outdated design built with much corruption, be safely operated now?” Villegas asked.

SAFETY AND INT’L REGULATION A year ago in January 2008, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspected the BNPP and submitted a detailed report to the Philippine Govt detailing all the requirements that would be expected by the international community of countries and agencies involved in nuclear electric power production. But only a good Bishop like Socrates Villegas could pack so much innuendo and insinuation into just a few sentences and questions.  Considering that the Westinghouse reactor has a 75 year warranty, and has never even been used (but has been maintained on-site for 30 years), there is no reason to indulge clerical error in assessing the  possible safety issue.  Indeed it is far more complex than he can imagine. A comprehensive reference is the interdisciplinary study and assessment of the Future of Nuclear Power which was conducted in 200 by a team from  the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

CORRUPTION Methinks that the good Bishop has no problem beating the dead horse of Da Apo, but ask him what he thinks of Asia’s Corruption Queen, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and watch his eyes roll heavenward,  his lips zip tight, and the face assumes a cherubic innocence, as if contemplating Mama Mary’s very knees.  Only Vidal Doble knows the diabolical powers of persuasion available to the good Bishop Socrates Villegas!  

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, who heads the Episcopal Commission on Social Action, Justice and Peace of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said the danger posed to society by the nuclear plant has to be considered.

He cited geographical location, noting that the power plant is at the foot of Mt. Natib, a potentially active volcano, which would make the nuclear facility vulnerable to seismic activity.

This is a valid concern. But if we look at Japan, with 55 operational nuclear reactors and its many active volcanoes, and 2600 earthquakes annually (much higher than the Philippines), the operation of a single reactor in Bataan would not be an unreasonable thing to attempt, even for the pusillanimous Pinoys, who are so easily abashed by clerical alarmism.   

Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, the first of the bishops to oppose the plan, cited the danger of improper disposal of nuclear waste.

People who are susceptible to clerical alarmism and misdirection, should know that commissioning and operating BNPP would have to be done under the auspices of the IAEA and the international watchdog agencies that oversee and assist countries in the operation of nuclear power plants and waste management.  Even the actual operation of the plant can be outsourced, possibly to Westinghouse itself, which offered to do so under international legal contract back in the 1980s, even after it had won the case filed against it by the Cory govt under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  

Or to the South Koreans who now have 20 years of successful experience operating just this kind of nuclear reactor.

NUCLEAR ENERGY AND CHERNOBYL

It is impossible to think about nuclear power without thinking about the Chernobyl Disaster in 1986

which truly spooked the global public against nuclear energy. But I think it is useful to think by analogy with the airline industry, acknowledged to be the safest, most efficient means of transportation in human history. Yet, it is in the nature of heavier than air flight by several hundred people, that when the rare accident or failure of flight does occur, the horrific results are usually spectacular and memorable beyond their actual statistical significance.  Chernobyl was to nuclear power what a major airliner crash is to the airline industry.  It is no indication of the overall viability of nuclear technology to provide, safe, clean, reliable and cost-effective electrical energy without the environmental impact of virtually all other technologies. 

Related sources of information include Ten Myths About Nuclear Energy

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