Nuclear power for the Philippines?

By John Mangun, Businessmirror, NOVEMBER 16, 2016

If you tend to get your information and form opinion from Facebook, this is definitely not for you. The Philippines will, hopefully, with both a sense of necessity and urgency, enter into a fact-based discussion on generating electricity using nuclear energy.

The dialogue on nuclear as a power-generating source is emotional, contentious and propaganda-based. Unfortunately, what passes for “academic studies” seem to be written by people who often have the ethics of a methamphetamine addict trading sex for drugs.

Dr. Kristin Shrader-Frechette is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Her credentials are impeccable, and her research work analyzes the ethical problems in risk assessment, public health and environmental justice, especially those related to radiological, ecological and energy-related risks.

In analyzing 30 papers on the economics of nuclear power for possible conflicts of interest, she found, of the 30, 18 had been funded either by the nuclear industry or pronuclear governments and were pronuclear; 11 were funded by universities or nonprofit non-governmental organizations and were antinuclear.

Shrader-Frechette’s 2011 book What Will Work says nuclear power is not an economic or practical technology. However, the examples are always in developed countries or nations with abundant energy- producing resources, such as natural gas or raging rivers for hydropower.

The pros and cons of nuclear energy are reasonably well defined, although the total economics of nuclear power are subject to intense debate. What we do know is that an energy-scarce nation, like France, has been generating 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear beginning in 1956.

The scare tactics after insolated incidents, such as Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, keep the facts off the table. More people are killed in traffic accidents each day in Metro Manila than died at Fukushima. Not a single person died from exposure to radiation at Fukushima.

In fact, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation—hardly a mouthpiece for the nuclear industry—released a report that their scientists have found no evidence to support the idea that the nuclear meltdown will lead to an increase in cancer rates or birth defects.

The debate on rehabilitating or replacing the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) must go forward. While the developed countries really do not care if Filipinos live in mud huts, we need to advance our own self-interest agenda, and nuclear power might be part of it.

However, the first critical discussion must be whether the Morong, Bataan, location is suitable for any nuclear plant. The public must be assured that it is safe. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has both the initial resources and expertise to make that judgment. If the DENR would function as it is supposed to and not with the attitude of somewhere between the Spanish inquisition and the Russian mafia—as it has in the past— we might get something accomplished.

The location of a nuclear-power facility is the first hurdle that must be crossed even if a brand-new power plant were to fall from the sky. We cannot ignore the reality that the Philippines is energy poor even with the substantial steps made in the direction of using alternative sources to fossil fuels.