Two members of the Joint Congressional Power Commission (JCPC) on Monday backed the plan of the Duterte administration to rehabilitate the 620-megawatt (MW) Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP).
Party-list Reps. Jericho Nograles of PBA and Rodel Batocabe of Ako-Bicol said in a news conference the plan of the Duterte administration to finally activate the BNPP could lower power rates in the country.
“Congress is ready to hear the debates…the pros and cons on the matter,” Nograles said.
Energy Secretary Alfonso G. Cusi has said the Department of Energy is currently conducting all the studies for the activation of the controversial nuclear-power plant.
Earlier the National Power Corp. said the BNPP could provide 620 MW, or 10 percent of the Luzon grid.
However, Nograles said the government would do a lot of work with the reopening of the BNPP that was supposed to operate commercially in 1986 but was mothballed during the term of former President Corazon C. Aquino. The government has allocated P50 million yearly just to maintain the BNPP.
“However, the BNPP needs a lot of work; this is not just a matter of budget…but securing the area, the engineering and special people who can run it efficiently and safely,” Nograles added.
“The good side of the BNPP or having any nuclear-power plant is that it will invigorate our steel industry, such as car manufacturing,” Nograles said.
For his part, Batocabe said, “I appreciate the pronouncement of the President to revive the BNPP, as his declaration will seal the fate of the mothballed plant, on what his administration would want to do on the BNPP.”
Civil-society organizations and environmental advocates, as expected, expressed alarm on Monday over the administration’s plan to revive the mothballed BNPP.
Responding to Cusi’s revelation of the President’s green light for the project, Sanlakas Party-list Secretary-General Aaron Pedrosa Jr. raised problems of environmental safety and sustainability that attached to reviving and maintaining nuclear- power plants.
“The revival of the BNPP is an environmental disaster waiting to happen,” Pedrosa said in a news statement.
“A nuclear plant, especially one in the Philippines, carries with it a number of hazards which effects could prove irreversible for a developing country like ours. First and primary of these effects are the inevitable nuclear waste produced by nuclear-power reactors,” he added.
Pedrosa said this type of waste, being radioactive, poses a threat to the biological integrity of the environment in which it is emitted.
“Historically, we know the unpredictability of both the degree and the length that effects of harmful radiation have on those who are exposed to it,” he said.
Center for Energy, Ecology, and Development convener Gerry Arances, meanwhile, cited the case of Fukushima I Power Plant in Fukushima, Japan, which in 2011 saw a nuclear meltdown and release of harmful radioactive material after the country was hit by a tsunami-triggered earthquake.
“The Philippines’ sudden move towards nuclear energy is baffling given how it is a country that is less technologically equipped than, but similarly vulnerable to environmental disasters as Japan, a developed country which has started to move away from nuclear power,” Arances said.
Arances instead urged the Duterte administration to turn towards indigenous renewable energy sources instead of costly, deadly and dirty energy sources.
2 comments
The earthquake caused the tsunami, not the other way around, “…after the country was hit by a tsunami-triggered earthquake”.
Purely skeptical and if you weigh in the coal powered generators causes environmental issues and if they want to go green solar and wind powered generator cause you more and yet unreliable. Nuclear powerplant is good and more environmentally friendly than coal as long as it is maintain or run properly. Other countries moving away to nuclear powerplant? No they are adding environmental friendly alternatives in addition to their nuclear plant. So that means they produce energy with sustainability since they all use nuclear power and green alternative generators