The moth balled Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, built during the Marcos administration, could have helped stave off the energy crisis in the early nineties had it been implemented correctly. What the country got was a nuclear meltdown waiting to happen had it been allowed to run. The project was riddled with so much anomalies due to massive graft and corruption that it was once decided to convert it to another type of power plant (oil, coal, etc) instead of trying to fix its problems. Eventually that idea too was scrapped because it would come out more expensive compared to building a new power plant using conventional energy.
Now comes the news that the Philippine Department of Energy and the Tokyo Electric Power Company are in plans to setup a Nuclear Power Plant in the Philippines. Considering past history, this is going to be a very tricky issue for the government. Especially since the government is still paying its debt’s for the construction of the Plant despite the fact that it was never made use of. Don’t get me wrong, I think its a good idea, but I hope it will help the country lower its energy rates. The Philippines is notorious for having very high electricity rates that turn off potential foreign investors. Then again, the decision to go nuclear is still ways off, as it is by 2022 that the country will decide to build a nuclear power plant based on former President Ramos’ 25 year plan for the country.
Article here
Category: Nuclear
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:58 am
[…] It was reported a while back that the Philippines was pondering on reviving its nuclear energy program in partnership with a Japanese Energy Company. The issue however is very delicate as a past program which was to deliver to the Philippines its first nuclear power plant resulted in a graft ridden project that gave birth to a mothballed power plant that was never run due to safety concerns. New technology developed by General Electric could afford the Philippines and other developing countries access to cheaper and safer nuclear power with their creation of the next generation of nuclear reactors. Their design incorporates improvements in the cooling systems which take away excess heat and convert the heat energy to electricity via gas turbines. The [new reactor design] replaces previous reactors’ complex systems for residual heat removal with a design that uses no pumps or emergency generators–in fact, it possesses no moving parts at all, except for the neutron-absorbing control rods that are pulled partway out from its core so that nuclear fission can proceed. That fission reaction boils the water in the [reactors] core, which becomes steam that gets carried away to large tubes in which it rises, releases its energy to turbines, and then condenses so that gravity causes it to flow back down to the core as water again. […]