CLARK FREEPORT – The idle Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) definitely no longer has any nuclear future and might have to be totally abandoned for other purposes, Energy Sec. Jose Rene Almendras said here.
“A coal fired power plant is being considered, but the conversion cost seems too high so it might be better to consider a new plant,” Almendras said at a press conference here during an “energy forum” held here Tuesday by the Department of Energy.
However, Almendras said that the government has not closed its doors to new nuclear technology developments that would take into consideration the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan as a result of the devastating tsumani triggered by a powerful quake in northeast Japan in March last year.
“Maybe in five to seven years from now, that new technology would be available and these are plants that can withstand risks,” he said, citing proposals to construct smaller nuclear plants producing lesser power.
Almendras also noted previous studies showing that the BNPP is not on an ideal site,” he said, referring to findings that the plant, whose construction started in 1976 during the Marcos administration, was located on an earthquake fault zone.
It is also too near Mt. Pinatubo whose eruption in 1991 was said to be one of the most powerful in recent history.
He also said that what happened at the Fukushima plant created a “socio-political sentiment that says no to nuclear plant and we cannot go against that sentiment.”
Almendras expressed support to proposals to make the BNPP a tourism attraction, should the move to convert it to a coal fired power plant be finally abandoned.
The plant, he said, is located in a beautiful area and that “there is no hazard there, there is no nuclear particle installed there.”
The BNPP building was almost completed by 1984 with its cost reaching US$2.3 billion, with a Westinghouse light water reactor designed to produce 621 megawatts of electricity.
It never became operational and in 1986, former Pres. Cory Aquino decided not to operate it amid objections from Bataan folk and environmental activists.
Almendras said that the government would still have to rely heavily on modern, environment-friendly coal-fired power plants, as he appealed to the public to support such projects.
The country, he noted, consumes about 10.5 metric tons of coal per year for electric power production.
He also said that the government is open to investors to explore some 30 areas for coal mining in the country, adding that without additional power plants, power outages in the Luzon grid would be inevitable by 2014.
He assured folk in areas proposed for coal fired plants that new technologies would be used in such plants to curtail pollution.
Almendras noted that the Subic-Redondo coal fired power plant now being constructed in Subic, Zambales amid some protests would be able to stave off Luzon grid’s power needs up to 2014, on top of the GN plant in Mariveles, Bataan which would fill in the requirements up to 2013.
He stressed the need for the public’s cooperation in the construction of more coal-fired power plants which are located near ports were coals could be unloaded from ships carrying coals. Such locations, he noted, would remove transport cost in electric bills.
He noted that it normally takes about five years before any such power plant could be built. “We must see the problem ahead of the curve. Every single delay in the construction translates into brownouts,” he said.
Almendras noted that the country’s annual power needs consumes about 10,580,400 metric tons of coal, while the cement industry consumes another 3.1 million metric tons.
He said the country produces about 7.6 million metric tons of coal and imports another 10.9 million tons mostly from Indonesia.
The coal from Indonesia is used for local power plants because coal mined in the Philippines is not suited to the design of such plants, he lamented.
This, he said, is the reason why he has instructed that the design of local power plants be reconfigured to accommodate locally mined coal.
