In a press statement made by Philippine Energy Minister Rafael Lotilla, he said that the option for the Philippines to dabble in Nuclear Energy as a source of Electricity is still 15 years down the road. As this is the time needed to train experts to study the viability of using Nuclear Power.
In line with this, it was also mentioned in the Media Release:
The Philippines has embarked on finalizing a Human Resource Development (HRD) program to develop a corps of nuclear scientists and technical experts to study various aspects of nuclear power plant operations such as siting, safety, security, transport of nuclear fuel, health and environmental impact, social acceptability and disposal.[source]
In the short and medium term however, he was for banking on renewable energy to power the country and meet the expected shortage in supply of electricy in 2010.
We should keep all our options open, but in the meanwhile it is absolutely necessary for us not to be destructed from our drive to develop renewable and indigenous sources of energy which can be implemented in the short and medium-term
Of course this project might be actually harder to sell to the Philippine public than it looks, given the previous experience with the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. The nuclear power plant that has finally been payed off last June 13, 2007, yet not one watt of energy was ever generated to power Philippine homes.
Of course the evil genius in me would say, why not continue releasing these press releases to project a semblance of interest in a Nuclear Program in the Philippines without actually doing anything tangible? Afterwards, float a nasty rumor that you are actually planning to develop a Nuclear Arsenal that could potentially throw the Bullish Asian Region into a crisis. In response to that foreign countries would offer debt forgiveness in exchange for shelving the Philippines Nuclear Super Power aspirations.
The worse that could happen with that bluff is that the Philippines gets accused of actually having WMD’s already then it gets invaded… then again, the Philippines doesn’t have any oil so that scenario is as pretty far fetched as the first one… *snicker*…
Category: Energy News, Asia
