Recomissioning the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant

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However, the nuclear program had been plagued with corruption issues from the Philippine government itself and Westinghouse even before its construction. Our country could have had two nuclear reactors for just $560 million. However, Herminio Disini, a broker agent working under Ferdinand Marcos, had given the project to Westinghouse even when General Electric, a multi-national energy-generating company, had a cheaper and technically better proposal. Alejandro Melchor, National Power Executive Secretary at that time, even tried to convince Marcos by assembling a team of experts to compare the cost and design layouts from the two companies which would have proven General Electric more plausible. Yet whatever arguments the panel made, these never convinced Marcos (Seagrave, 1988).

It was because Marcos received huge kickbacks from the project. When Westinghouse had asked Disini to negotiate with the Philippine Goverment, Disini received an initial commission of at least $50 million in which Marcos was given $30 million. Moreover, the original cost of the project was originally $650 million but it ballooned to $1.1 billion because Marcos had demanded for further kickback commissions to accommodate Disini and other people who were involved in the proceedings. The construction finally started in 1976 but was temporarily halted in 1979 following the nuclear disaster of Three Mile Island in US. Consequently, Marcos assembled his own team of experts to conduct an investigation in the safety of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. The investigation revealed over 4000 defects in its design and safety equipment. This led to the renegotiation with Westinghouse for the plant reconstruction, eventually, reaching to a cost of $2.2 billion for additional safety features, higher interest costs and inflation (Fabros, 1986; Seagrave, 1988).

In 1987, a year after Marcos was ousted in the 1986 EDSA revolution, Corazon Aquino, the president at that time, decided not to operate the power plant based on the recommendations of Rene Saguisag, former chief presidential legal counsel of Corazon Aquino and a critic of Marcos, because for them it would remind the Filipinos about the violence and disorder during the Marcos administration even when the country struggled for energy production during Aquino’s term. Furthermore, when Saguisag was elected as a Senator, Saguisag commanded an ad hoc committee in 1988 to declare BNPP as the “biggest single and most notorious component of the country’s external debt” (Paredes, 2014).

On the other hand, Dr. Gerardo Sicat, renowned Filipino economist and former Director General of National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), stated that there would never have been an energy crisis if the nuclear power plant had been utilized. After Aquino’s term, the country again experienced energy crises especially during the early 1990s. This forced the government to privatize the power generation, transmission and distribution of the country to address the widespread blackouts. Sicat stressed out that President Fidel V. Ramos, Aquino’s successor, would have been able to concentrate on other development plants rather than problems in energy production that occurred early in Ramos’s term if only BNPP was used (Paredes, 2014; Romero, 2014).

The nuclear power plant never had a chance to prove its capability. The power plant became a victim of the country’s struggle for political power. Do the Filipino people really want to waste all the money that have been spent for a supposedly-effective equipment that could have mended the country’s problems on energy production?

Decades after the power plant was mothballed, National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) announced in December 2009 that it would assessed the nuclear power plant as part of its long term energy development program. Thus, NAPOCOR asked the Korean Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) to conduct a feasibility test for the nuclear power plant in early 2010. The Korean Electric Power Corporation is the operator of Kori 2, dubbed as the “exact copy of BNPP” that was also constructed by Westinghouse. A recommendation by KEPCO to NAPOCOR was submitted in mid-2010 stating that the BNPP could still be rehabilitated at a cost of Php 1 billion ($56 million) to equip it with modern technology ensuring full capacity and safety (Resurreccion, 2010).

However, it is undeniable that there are threats of accidents, radiation exposure, nuclear proliferation and other negative effects from the use of nuclear energy. Yet, the threat is believed to be not as bad as anti-nuclear activists claim. In fact, nuclear energy is safely generated most of the time (Haney, 2012).

Bodansky (2004) states that assessment of reactor safety is a primary consideration in constructing a nuclear power plant. The probability and severity of nuclear accidents are estimated in assessing its safeness. In fact, there had been no accident for commercial nuclear reactors in non-Soviet countries, including the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, which had casualties. The 1986 Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union and the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan are the lone exception on the track record of commercial nuclear safeness, but both had a great impact because they received huge attention from the media and public.

Meanwhile, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant had an assessment on its safeness. An evaluation conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2008 stated that BNPP is within the international set of standards mentioning that its design is comparable to the nuclear power plants in South Korea, Slovenia, Brazil and Unite States which all have outstanding safety records. Furthermore, Westinghouse, even when it had corruption issues, has an excellent safety record in constructing nuclear power plants. It currently has 71 operational nuclear power plants in 12 countries including BNPP’s “twin sister” Kori 2, and its facilities never had an accident. This proves that the BNPP is effectively safety to be operated once rehabilitated because it already had a safety assessment, and Westinghouse never once had a nuclear accident (Santiago, 2008; Buquid, 2011).

However, critics in the past like Rene Saguisag raised issues that the BNPP has a dangerous location because the site is in a risky position of serious damage to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the latter evident being near to Mt. Natib, Mt. Mariveles and Mt. Pinatubo (Buquid, 2011). Yet, the facility was able to withstand earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the past, as it was in its manifestation during the 1991 volcanic eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. The Korean Electric Power Corporation even dubbed BNPP as the “Mercedes Benz” of nuclear power plant for having been able to withstand such disaster. Furthermore,