Nuclear plant revival not a political issue – Cojuangco

MANILA, Philippines – Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco said his proposal to revive the Bataan nuclear plant should not be turned into a “political and an emotional issue.”

“I am disappointed that the nuke energy generation issue in the country is taken on the same breath as Charter change. It’s unfair because it should not be a political issue,” he said in a statement.

“It was politics that killed our chance for a cheaper and economically viable energy source in the past. Let us not go down that loser’s path again,” he said.

He said the nation has to face the issue of using nuclear power “with level-headedness, and all parties must come to the discussion with a healthy outlook sans emotion.”

“We must do away with personal vested interests, especially those which are political in nature,” he said.

Cojuangco’s proposal for the government to rehabilitate and operate the mothballed Bataan nuclear power plant has faced strong opposition from the same groups that objected to its operation due largely to safety concerns during the Aquino administration.

The lawmaker-son of billionaire-businessman Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. is advocating the operation of the plant because he said it could bring down the cost of electricity as much as P2.50 per kilowatt-hour.

He is now on his third and last term, and he admitted that he might not achieve his goal before he exits from Congress on June 30, 2010.

But he said he would not abandon his advocacy since operating the Bataan power plant is the right choice, given the prospect of crippling power outages in three to five years.

He wanted the country to benefit from the $2.3 billion that it paid for the plant since the Marcos years until about two years ago.

“The plant is there, it’s brand new and it can be operated after we have addressed the safety concerns and other issues all over again,” he told reporters.

“We can cut the cost of power to the consumer in a big way by operating this plant, which our people have already paid for a year or two ago but which has not produced even a single watt of electricity,” he said.

He said besides its potential to cut power cost, the nuclear facility would also be “a lot cleaner than a coal plant, which produces more pollutants than a nuclear plant.”

“We are already starting to reap the fruits of our indecision on the Bataan nuclear (power) plant and the need for more power plants,” he said, citing occasional brownouts in Luzon and the recent power outage in the entire Visayas.

He added that it would take three to five years to build a power plant.

He pointed out that even if the Bataan facility would operate, the nation would still have to build more plants to meet growing demand.

“By the time we decide, the situation may be so bad that IPP contracts would be foisted on us just like in the past and we have no choice but to accept them even if they would mean a much higher cost of electricity that would drive away investors,” Cojuangco said.

He was referring to the contracts the Ramos administration entered into with private investors or the so-called independent power producers (IPPs), which consumers are paying whether their plants operate or not.

Due to these contracts, power rates in the country are among the highest in Asia. –Jess Diaz, Philippine Star