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I see from some recent reports that research is continuing on the
potential for development of nuclear power for the Philippines. This
is of course not the first time that this has been considered, back
in the early 1970s a plan was conceived in the energy crisis of the
time, to develop a 620MW nuclear plant in Bataan. This started the
Westing-house debacle. Construction started in 1976 and was
completed in 1984 at a cost of about $ 2.3 billion. The plant was
never brought into operation due to reports of its being unsafe,
being built near a major fault line and close to Pinatubo volcano.
Despite this, the Philippines has been paying for the plant at the
rate of about $160,000/day for over 30 years.
A few years ago I was approached to take a
(very) senior position in an organization called the Nuclear
Decommissioning Authority in the UK. It was the aim of this
organization to oversee the decommis-sioning, putting out of service
of most of the nuclear reactors in the UK, many of which were
getting quite old. Nuclear power accounts for about 23 percent of
electricity production in the UK and has been in use since the
1960s. It is operated in an extremely safe manner and to very high
standards with continual oversight on operational safety from
various national and international agencies; there has never been a
major incident. Although the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency still
exists, there is now a growing mood within the UK government to
re-establish nuclear power as a main power source—with oil at over
$100/barrel and rising and coal at about $170/ton, there appears to
be a case to re-examine ‘the case for nuclear power’. It’s
cheap and it can be operated safely. China is embarked on a major
nuclear power development program (40,000 MW in 12 years to 2020).
France and other European countries as well as the USA and Japan
(45,000 MW operating since 1966) have been big nuclear users for
many years and continue to be.
It will be several generations before renewables
(hydro, biomass, solar, wave and other as yet well undeveloped new
sources) can make much of a dent in fossil fuels (oil, coal, and
natural gas). The price of fossil fuels continues to rise to levels,
which in fairness are what they should be anyway taking account of
aside from normal decreases in the value of money, or inflation (oil
now at $100/bbl is the equivalent of oil 25 years ago at $20 /bbl
[barrel]—is what it in fact was, depending of course on which way
you do the calculation !). It is interesting to note that oil
hovered around or below $20/bbl for a hundred years up to 1973. So
things are not going to get better. We have been living with
unrealistically low oil prices for many years, only now are they
catching up to what they really should be.
So reopening the discussion on nuclear power for
the Philippines should be seen as a constructive move, albeit it is
highly unlikely that the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant would come back
into the reckoning; Pintaubo did in fact erupt, and the plant is
sited near a major fault line. Nuclear power is clean energy, as
said it is relatively cheap and not subject to major market driven
fluctuations in price. Even though there have been some major
nuclear power disasters; Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the safety
issues are very well understood and the processes and mechanisms
surrounding nuclear safety are tried and tested and rigorously
internationally supervised. Most of all though, it would allow the
Philippines to reduce its unacceptable dependence on imported fossil
fuel, and facilitate real challenge to the (very high) indigenous
gas price, as well as provide a substitute for, or even negate, the
need for future LNG imports.
To find a good safe site however will prove a
major challenge to the geoscientists, but I think it would really
help the Philippines if a suitably stable site could be found …
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Mike can be contacted at mawootton@gmail.com
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