‘Nuclear best near-term solution to power crunch’—solon

THE BEST near-term answer to the current power shortage is for the government to invest less than $1 billion in reviving the “still-brand new” Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, according to outgoing Pangasinan Representative Mark O. Cojuangco.

Cojuangco said in an interview that based on current projections on Philippine economic growth, Luzon alone would need five times as much generation capacity as the 621-megawatt BNPP in 2012.

“And with a growth rate of 3 percent yearly, we will need an additional 1,000 MW every other year,” he said.

The Luzon-based Manila Electric Co., which serves the biggest customer base in the country, has been implementing rotating power interruptions that usually lasts an hour.

The situation is worse in Mindanao where brownouts last 12 hours or longer.

“Right now, we have only two choices – continue to burn fossil fuels or do nuclear,” he said.

Cojuangco added that the much-touted renewable energy options such as wind turbines and solar panels were not yet feasible.

He said that if these resources were to be made the answer to the current shortage of electricity, power rates could go as high as P45 to P50 a kilowatt-hour.

But the lawmaker, who cannot run for reelection as he is in his third term, said the BNPP was so much associated with the abuses of the Marcos regime that its repair has become a political decision rather than a technical matter.

The next best alternative is to build another plant from scratch with $5 billion worth of supplies from a scuttled project in North Korea, Cojuangco said.

He was referring to two unused 1,000-MW nuclear reactors from the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (Kedo), which decided in 2006 to stop a project for North Korea to hinder the communist nation’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Kedo is made up of South Korea, the United States, Japan, European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Poland, Czech Republic and Uzbekistan.

Cojuangco said the BNPP itself remained new considering that it has never been started up. “Because of that, the BNPP is newer than three-fourths of all nuclear power plants operating in the world today.”

Asked whether the Philippines could afford nuclear power, he said the country was already shouldering the costs by paying for expensive electricity that was currently available. –Ronnel Domingo, Philippine Daily Inquirer