Professor Lacanilao contends that “non-scientists” get recognized in this he means the science academics who don’t publish (which implies they hardly do research) get appointed to the national academy and get the awards. This according to Lacanilao is contrary to universal acceptance of science meritocracy that characterizes developed economies . Scientists are promoted on the basis of their research productivity. The more productive get the grants and then get the awards.

We have read or heard the clear fact that science investments correlate to how advanced the national economy is. This has been the subject of numerous presentations by UP Science Dean Caesar Saloma to various fora, including congressional and Senate hearings. Investments have to be made to science education (especially at university and postgraduate levels), science infrastructure and science policy. Our science investment in terms of percent GDP has declined from 0.15 (when GMA began her presidency) to 0.12 in 2008. President Macapagal-Arroyo may be lauded for setting the right priorities for that 0.12-0.15%. We have 1 scientist for 7978 Filipinos compared to 1 in 2248 Indonesians. Since Indonesia has a much larger population than we have, we can only conclude that the Philippines is producing not enough S&T professionals or are losing them at an alarming rate.

In contrast Japan has 1 in 180, Singapore, 1 in 183, USA 1 in 216, Taiwan 1 in 223 and China at 1 in 180.

Germany has the highest science PhD to population ratio 1 PhD to 3316 Germans. If the Philippines has to play catch up then it needs 26,508 practicing science PhDs. DOST says we just have 1374 in the country.

The key to economic advancement with respect to S&T development, according to Saloma is in four points

1. Mature venture-capital industry, 2. Close relations between universities and industry 3. Willingness of consumers to try new products 4. Open immigration policy

This requires that we have a science policy which the politicians understand and this is so tied up with a lack of meritocracy that Lacanilao bewails.

We cannot expect the President of the Philippines to be a scientist. But we should expect the him/her to be adequately advised on S&T and he/she should be aware that S&T is needed in advancing the economy. We have had lawyers,general officers, an engineer, a PhD in Economics, a homemaker and an actor in the job. While the educational preparation of these men and women were not lacking in basic science literacy, some of the presidents were quite informed and some were not. An example of the President that had a keen interest in the nascent Philippine science effort is Manuel Quezon, who supported the American-founded Bureau of Science. Now under Filipino hands, Quezon directed the bureau to develop local technologies for health and agricultural development. The 1930s Philippine Journal of Science documents how this Quezon directed science policy went. Were it not for the Japanese invasion, Philippine science would have developed at par with Japan’s and a nationalist industrialization program may have really taken off.  The Japanese occupation derailed this effort but even then the Laurel occupation presidency’s science policy also proceeded along the same lines as Quezon’s but with  obvious war dictated priorities.

The Philippines emerged from the war with its science infrastructure totally destroyed. While these can be replaced, what was irreplaceable were Filipino scientists who were killed. Eminent physician Dr Candido Africa is an example. He developed a range of diagnostic tests in medicine. Another example is Dr Fe del Mundo’s chemist-brother Salvador, who was a pioneer in materials science, having fabricated locally sourced ceramic prosthetics in line with Quezon’s policy.  He was massacred by the Japanese.  Dr Fe del Mundo, a National Scientist, who  at 98 is still with us is the last living example of Quezon’s investment in science. After the war, our science effort went hand in hand with America’s Cold War effort. The 1950s Philippine Journal of Science documents our interest in things nuclear.

The Philippines was never a science lagging country. But the policies of the post 1946 Philippines contributed to its decline.

Lacanilao’s peeve is that the people that advise the President are not doing research themselves and thus have little to contribute. He zeroes in on the NAST, which is mandated by law to advise the President on S&T matters and policy.

Now he brings up the issue that a scientist partylist group AGHAM is running in the 2010 elections but is headed by a non-scientist.

The question is whether AGHAM can bring up to Congress concerns on science. The main constraint is that the science community is so small and hardly makes a political ripple. Scientists will have to work with non-scientists who they hope can articulate their concerns. The irony of it all is that Science is not a peripheral issue in the national life, but one of those in the center. If we value economic advancement, then we should value the importance of science and technology. In order to boost S&T’s role in reducing poverty, a science policy can be designed with programs that can result in high value and high edge technologies that can be produced locally. This is what Brazil, Mexico and China did.

The first dean of the UP College of Science, Dr Roger Posadas compares the government investment driven “science push” approach and the private investment driven “market pull” approach. Posadas contends that this technoliberal approach has retarded S&T development in the Philippines. Our local companies are comfortable in importing technologies and reduced competitiveness. This policy started with the Cory Aquino administration. The Aquino administration fell in with the technoliberal paradigm as a likely reaction to the technonationalist policies of the Marcos administration, despite how ridiculously low tech that was. (It was during the Marcos administration that NSDB then NSTA focused on low technology science. During the Aquino presidency the NSTA became DOST but wags called it still “Department of Suka and Toyo”)

These are some of the issues that NONE OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES have ever said anything about. The closest candidate which has said something near these is Gibo piloting his CGI jetplane. Now he should fly a Pinoy made jetplane to prove we have really taken off and caught up with Brazil.

The Philippines cannot be saved without Science. Without science our graduates will find only work imitating all sorts of foreign accents in the wee hours of the morning!

I don’t see much of a future at all. Almost all our politicians hail that as “progress”!

In the 1980s manned space flight took a backseat when NASA realized that by sending robotic probes, like Voyager, we can get the same science for less bucks and less chance of people being lost in space. The space shuttle was sent aloft in 1981 or thereabouts. Russia’s Mir space station was launched in 1986. In the same year just before the fateful February Snap election, the Challenger blew up like a giant kwitis and an ailing Ferdinand Marcos commented on the disaster. Two weeks later, Marcos was history.

The question that bugs space fans like me (and all the Apollo astronauts) is that how come the US never went back to the Moon? As for the Soviet Union, it realized that it can’t keep up with capitalism and settled for a space station program using 1960s Soyuz derivatives (which still works). The USA had the money but the 1980s Reagan years were an age of waiting for the Soviet Union to collapse (which it did). Together with the communist collapse, went the Soviet space program. Its copycat shuttle “Buran” went to space on remote control only once. Russia reincarnated the space program by 1) selling launch time to the Americans and 2) space tourists on Mir.

Today a recession hit America and a resurging Russia are considering going to the Moon on the way to Mars. America needs a spaced out distraction and Russia knows that now it has the cash to finally beat the Americans. America may find the cash, but I don’t know whether doing a JFK is enough to boost the morale of jaded Americans. As Obama’s “change that matters” begins to sound like “change that hardly mattered”(and Oprah and other talk show hosts begin to eat their words.), Obama may do a JFK to boost his sagging image and send someone to Mars. A politically inclusive and correct publicity stunt is to send a black American who may first set foot on the red planet.

But another Space Race is too expensive for Obama and Medvedev to contemplate alone and since the shuttle will be retired, NASA and the Russian Space Agenc will have to use 3 stage rockets and Russia’s dependable Soyuz, once more to send supplies to the International Space Station (whose scientific value is hotly debated). It is likely that the Russians and the Europeans will play a large role in the Mars mission.

And planting the Stars and Stripes or the Russian tricolor would be the most un-PC thing to do on Mars. It is likely that an environmentalist “Earth Flag” will flutter in a Martian dust storm.

Readers may not know it and wags may laugh about it but the Republic of the Philippines has its own space program. It is under DOST direction and focuses on remote sensing and space based research on monitoring the Philippine environment. The Pinoy space dream is to have out own natural resource sensing satellite. However we don’t have any launch capability (hey wags! Don’t mention “kwitis” from Bocaue!) and thus the program surely has security implications. Who is going to launch our satellite? The Americans?, Russians?, Europeans? Chinese?, Japanese?, Indians?, Pakistanis? or the Dear Leader in Pyongyang?

Of course all these parties will do it for a fee. How much could the fee be? It could be that these parties may demand that we give them some remotely sensed data about our dwindling natural resources. The security issues are very obvious. Our own satellite can track down those pesky Abu Sayaff and zap them with a cruise missile. Marcos even in his dictatorial days realized the advantages of space. And Prez Gloria (who according to PDI’s Amando Doronila is the A student in Marcos 101!) I assume realizes the same potentials and advantages.

One thing hindering countrywide research on the Philippine environment is the cost of remotely sensed data. For example, my research project staff inquired how much the cost of the latest image of Quezon City and this was quoted at 1 million pesos! The French and the Americans own the images. Some “freebies” may be obtained from NASA, ESA and the US Navy but these are usually of low resolution. In many cases we have to content ourselves with Google Earth!

Thus DOST has called for space technology applications research proposals in the last two years or so. Two national conferences have been hosted and I attended one. In these conferences it is obvious that a space program will help us protect our resources and our national security. How the Philippines develops its space program is likely to be in cooperation with space nations in the region. Here the Chinese and Russians have shown interest. So far I haven’t heard any peep from NASA aside from their call for our scientists to help them put up a aerosol monitoring station in the Philippines. Since this has military applications, the security aspect is real and obvious.

While Randy David’s 2008 speech dealt with philosophical convergence between the natural and social sciences (which only those who have read a bit of philosophy of science may appreciate fully), Mike Tan’s speech touched on science and religion, first in the global context and in the Philippine context. No serious Filipino academic in the social and natural sciences  has ever done this.

Tan’s thesis is that the Filipino is inherently religious and this allows him/her to . But since Tan cited Darwin so many times, I am tempted to believe that Tan subscribes to the Darwinian thesis that religion evolved as a result of natural selection.

Since Tan deals with anthropology of health issues, he is the right man to say that the inherent religiosity of the people gives fitness to survive in a changing environment. With a disaster prone geography, Filipinos will probably need RELIGION more than people in the West today.But religion as an adaptation giving fitness is still the subject of research.  Science  advanced in the West as society began to empirically understand natural phenomena. Reductionism allowed for a greater confidence in predicting outcomes. But in an age of observable within a lifetime climate change, will the West get that “old time religion” back?

This is what Tan challenges the 2009 science class. How can science and religion work out in Pinoy society for the better?  What he calls as “religious exceptionalism” (Tan doesn’t want to use the F word ! not the 4 letter one but Fundamentalism) seems to be a foreign import. The majority Catholic Philippines is a unique case in evangelization history. Very few friars were martyred in the Philippines as compared in other Asian countries. The evangelization of the Philippines occured rapidly. Was it that Filipinos were not prone to exceptionalism? Some historians of religion cite that the inciepient monotheism inherent in Filipinos made it easier for the friars.

Tan also cites the obvious fact that religion “preserved” the knowledge needed for science to develop. I found Tan’s discourse on the matter very interestung for he started out with Islam and how it preserved Greek knowledge in mathematics. medicine and astronomy that would have been lost to the West. The Roman Catholic Church benefited from this and Science (which the UPCS is heir to) is a Daughter of the Roman Church. The Roman Church’s thesis is that you need reason and faith to understand the cosmos. For this reason, the Roman Catholic Church is the only religious organization today that has an academy of science under the Pope’s patronage.

And so back to Darwin, Einstein and Galileo. All of them had run afoul of religious exceptionalism in their time. But all of them saw something Divine in the natural phenomena they sought to explain.

With a more pluralistic society evolving in the Philippines, Tan says that the exceptionalists are getting louder. What scientists in the Philippines have to do is to get into the talk!

If Mike continues with this line of academic inquiry, he could be the perfect counterfoil to Richard Dawkins!

BTW, graduation ceremonies are one of the best venues for the public to be appraised of developments in the state of Philippine science. Dean Caesar Saloma appraised the audience on the challenges of the College of Science. While UPCS has made great strides in graduate training in the sciences, there is still much to be desired. According to Saloma, the college graduates only 13-14 PhDs per year. Given that the college has many PhDs, it should be churning out at least 70 a year. To speed up national development, all of our higher educational institutions should have at least 1/3 of their faculty as PhD holders. There is a need really.

I think one reason is that our infrastructure development has lagged behind faculty development. One of reasons why young PhDs leave is that they can’t find a lab to work in. The on-going construction of the National Science Complex in Diliman should answer much of that need.

Planting trees is a good Earth Day activity but it means work

This summer I am not teaching but I am preparing new ways of teaching Environmental Science 1 (Environment and Society) for the coming academic year. ES 1 is one of the more difficult introductory courses to teach. Unlike other general subjects, you cannot “box in” environmental science with a straight laced syllabus.

The truth is that right from day 1 of the semester, students will have to think not just outside the box but beyond it. The science  of environment of course rests on theories. I introduce the following theories 1) Matter and energy links and cycling, 2) Resources, 3) Technology impacts 4) Sustainability and 5) Earth as a system.

Take note I don’t have in the syllabus “climate change”. This is a subject that in my few years of teaching “boxes” in students’ thinking to the extent they mouth what I call “Greenpeace-isms”

Climate change for one thing, cannot be stopped for if there is one thing true about planet Earth’s climate, is that it is always changing. But climate change can be best dealt in the classroom in terms of all the theories earlier mentioned. So I hope students develop a critical eye on events like “Earth Hour” and “Earth Day”.

National Geographic has something on how Earth Day started. What was once a Vietnam War era anti-war type of protest has become a global movement. This year 1 billion people are expected to take part. But sadly many people just celebrate a single day of commitment. That’s why I found Earth Hour an idiocy. For one thing that’s just 6o minutes of commitment.

Earth Day is historical for it ushered in a global awareness of environmental problems. But the Earth Day activity that has the most impact is caring for trees. The usual tree planting we do is a one time commitment, but taking care of trees is a lifetime commitment. As for the usual Earth Day plantings as part of publicity stunts and corporate social responsibility involves a photo op and putting a tree sapling in a hole previously dug by someone else! Then the soil is put back in the hole and voila, I am green and I feel good!

But the foresters I know have said that these Earth Day activities take much from their most pressing responsibility of guarding and seeing that the trees are cared for or protected. Also its the foresters who dig the holes and these weekend environmentalists never even bother to dig the hole themselves.

Planting and carine for trees is the most basic “landcare” activity. It has a pedagogical purpose. Students should internalize after the activity that planting trees means hard work . In fact it is much easier to chop down trees.

So some environmental advocates say that we need to dedicate “Earth lives” if we want to see some positive results. But our Pinoy Earth Day is I believe still a cliche! This morning I saw a media spectacle of an Earth effigy held aloft as a protest in front of DENR’s Visayas Avenue gate. The stunt caused a traffic gridlock which resulted in 1) more greenhouse gases spewed up by idling engines, 2) more NOx emissions and 3) a horrible rush hour!

Now how’s that for saving planet Earth? So just like many things about Pinoy society, our environmentalism has to grow up and send for recycling its cliches.

The environmentalism that counts is more than mere one day gimmicks but something more substantial. Thankfully we have people like Cardinal Dency Rosales of Manila, who as Bishop of Malaybalay showed how the Church can critically be engaged against the illegal logging problem.

BTW, in the photo above, you can just make out the dilapidated UP Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM)  building. The good news this Earth Day is that construction of the new IESM building has commenced at the National Science Complex (NSC).  Environmental Science has been a discipline at UP for almost 40 years but hasn’t received much priority in science program development. In the last 20 years, our science development priorities were directed at launching the economy to high technology industrial development. Environment took a back seat. But now the idea of viable “green technologies” has taken the front seat.

The IESM building will be the first “green” academic and research building in the country. While it cannot be completely carbon neutral (sorry, some of the analytical and research equipment requires airconditioning!), at least the teaching building will utilize passive cooling, using appropriate engineering and architectural innovations,  recycled rainwater for toilets, solar energy for lighting, and if there are sponsors, venues for demonstrating “green technologies” for urban settings.

However the 100 million peso budget allocated by the national governmemnt only covers the physical structure itself and given the technical and design specs for the building, this amount is barely enough. We need friends to ensure that the classrooms will have the right facilities to make learning enjoyable. If readers want to sponsor the classrooms, just holler!

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate crowds?

If I mentioned that as I pan my eyes around, one can notice that there were loads of pretty young women around. That’s digressing, right?

Anyway, so it took awhile but we made our way inside this massive Cathedral, the lights blaze bright. At the end of the massive hall, there stood the Altar, bare. To its side, lines have formed as Men, Women and Children kiss a small statue of the Crucified Jesus.

It isn’t idol worship. Is it?

The status around this massive Cathedral are used as teaching aide. It gives people something tangible to hold on to. It helps a religious people to visualize history like their saints, and the abstract concept of their God.

Some part of me thinks… there are Catholics who don’t see it that way because there is so much more to the Catholic faith than this. There is the lesson and wisdom of service in the washing of the feet, for one.

And another is this NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory snap of a very young and powerful pulsar, (PSR B1509-58):

Cosmic Hand

Faith need not be at odds with Science; the latter is a quest to describe and discover this Universe of myriad possibilities and beauty. This is a universe that Faith believes was made by the hand of God and can be a celebration of that belief. If you happen not to believe, the universe is still a beautiful place, isn’t it? And yet I can not help but wonder that a lot of people will spend this Easter missing that point too.

image credit is:

The scientific fact is nuclear power is relatively safe. However there is a catch and those against or for nuclear power should know. A nuclear accident may result in significant loss of life and consequent environmental disaster. This was terribly shown in the Chernobyl accident in 1986. But the Chernobyl accident was a tragic confluence of human error and outdated Soviet Union technology. The whole incident as described in Wikipedia involved testing a cooling safety device that required a flow of coolant water run by diesel pumps. A 60 second delay in kicking in the pumps led to a catastrophic meltdown. Also there were problems in communication between engineers manning work shifts.

Also the Chernobyl plant had no containment structure typical of Soviet plants. In the West, these structures are required. So when the steam built up the roof of the nuclear plant was ripped apart and the resulting steam explosion hurled the graphite moderators and control rods flying everywhere. It has to be emphasized that nuclear reactor doesn’t do a Hiroshima (as often dished out in the blurbs), they melt. In the case of Chernobyl, the steam explosion caused a massive radioactive fallout.

It is obvious that the Cory regime mothballed the BNPP for two reasons 1) It is a Marcos creation and 2) the Chernobyl accident. The first one is expected. The Cory regime abolished many of the good done by the Marcos regime and gave us the mess we have now (that’s another story!) We shall now examine the Chernobyl argument with the current debate on the BNPP’s rehabilitation and operation.

Again the whole brouhaha reflects the lack of science literacy in Philippine society. Now we are not at odds with the religions that DJB is crusading or jihading against, but a more irritating and modern belief system, Environmentalism built on ideology and half truths!

The tragedy is that the debate has focused on rehashed arguments dating back from the Cold War. These are 1) seismic vulnerability, 2) a dormant volcano and 3) safety and security concerns. The problem is that Greenpeace and other greenies uses these as arguments without much scientific or even logical basis and yet they say that there is an “abuse of science”. If there was an abuse of science, the greenies like Greenpeace are guilty of it. Read this op ed. How can BNPP be a Philippine Chernobyl when Three Mile Island’s accidents have nothing to do with Chernobyl? Linking this to BNPP is a stretch of illogical thinking. It is more logical to blame Natib volcano (which hasn’t blown its top in thousands of years)!

Now where is the new science that will tell us 1) if Natib is likely to erupt 2) if frequent are earthquakes in Napot Point and can the reactor sustain seismic shock, 3) if it is economically feasible to run it despite it was a bad loan?

Then we can look at Japan and France’s experience. Despite the risks, how come they still use nuclear power especially in earthquake shaky Japan? As for uranium and petroleum, don’t we learn in Physics 1 that there is more energy from 1 gm of U than 1 gm of petroleum? True both are nonrenewables but one gives us more energy. As for security, are the threats to a nuclear plant in the Philippines the same as what is dealt to Globe cell sites? Can we ensure that our nuclear plant is not a military target?

Perhaps Edcel Lagman is the only sane party in this debate. He suggests that the Cojuangco bill focus on reassessing this 1970s era plant and coming up with the appropriate recommendation based on 21st century science. And once more the unbalancedness and lack of science literacy in the Inquirer rears its large head again.

When asked for my personal opinion on the BNPP, I told the students this. In this promising 21st century where the technologies for renewables are there, why are we even considering nuclear power using 1970s technology? If we go nuke, shouldn’t go fast breeder? Don’t you suspect that some contractor-congressman wanting to get a commission?

Now  there you really don’t need science to get to the truth!

Perhaps one of the positive developments in the Philippines is there is a “boom” in science jobs never before seen. This is a direct result of continued increase in S&T funding by the Macapagal-Arroyo administration over the span of 5 years. This science investment as finally translated as full blown research programs. For example I have written about the 17 urgent senior research associate jobs in an earlier post. I just learned that more then 30 jobs are needed initially. When the research programme enters its second phase, there will be more jobs available that each lab can employ a complement of 50 to 100 people.

We just hope that when the research programs end, economic times would be better and investors would be attracted to the new opportunities provided by these activities. As for the teaching sector, I was informed that the country’s top universities are in need of many new PhDs  in their attempt to improve faculty profile and output. Perhaps this is a positive result of those despised university ranking surveys! :-) Not only PhDs are needed in the universities. In teaching colleges, Masters degree holders are needed to teach the basic sciences. This is also noted in the professional schools.

Since there is a demand for these services, the salaries have started to become extremely attractive that some science grads have DITCHED the CALL CENTERS for the lab! The senior researcher jobs with all the benefits may give a young man/woman about 25K a month something that only a few call centers can initially match.

As for the PhDs, the salaries in the private universities are quite attractive and approach middle management  rates in the corporate world and offer the possibility of TENURE, something rare in the corporate sector.

If these positive developments continue, the country might see the start of a science driven economy. But this will require a long term vision for the politicians and investors. So in 2010, we have to ask the presidentiables what their ideas on this are.

Too bad I got by BSc ages ago!

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