Days before the suggestion to revive the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) was carried by the newspapers, I received a text message that said, ?What was unsafe 20 years ago cannot be made safe by congressional action,? or words to that effect. That sent me digging into the papers I delivered during the 8th Congress which revealed that there?s nothing new in the revival of the issue; the arguments remain the same, whether here in our country or elsewhere.
The arguments against the nuclear plant were well presented in a newspaper editorial. The most often mentioned by the local people who have taken to the streets is that the site sits on the so-called Pacific ?Ring of Fire,? an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin, and is therefore prone to seismic upheaval. Although nuclear plants can be built to withstand temblors, the public remains unconvinced, especially after a recent quake in Japan caused radio active leaks in a nuclear plant at Kashiwazaki City. Can we imagine what would have happened if such a disaster occurred here, where the concern for public safety is plainly lacking? That in itself is a strong argument for opposing the nuclear plant. With corruption extant in almost all sectors, what if the money intended for safety measures is stolen or reduced for ?kickbacks?? Also, the location is in a densely populated part of the country, which makes the safety risks greater, as the smallest incident can claim a large number of lives.
These arguments were not those in a recent the Philippine Daily Inquirer editorial, and the plant referred to was not the BNPP in Morong town in Bataan province, northwest of Manila. It was the Jakarta Post firing a salvo against the plan to build the first nuclear plant in Indonesia in 2010 at Mt. Muria, Jepara, Central Java, where dozens of ?ulama? [Islamic law scholars] gathered and came out with a verdict against the nuclear plant, declaring it ?haram,? or forbidden by Islamic law, arguing that the potential hazards far outweighed the benefits. Concerned about safety issues and the handling of radioactive wastes, around 1,000 residents near the site chased away the state minister of research and technology who conducted a public hearing. The Morong residents, in contrast, were far more polite to the congressional delegation that conducted the hearing recently at Morong, but they might take the cue from the Jepara residents next time.
If something can go wrong, sooner or later it will, according to Murphy?s Law. Nuclear facilities, whether operated in Third World or First World countries, are not beyond the reach of this Law. Chernobyl showed it. Three-Mile Island proved it. And Kashiwazaki, which discharged 50 percent more radiation than earlier reported, confirmed it. Thus, those opposed to nuclear power plants do not say incidents are likely to happen, they say they can and do happen.
If what happened in Chernobyl were to happen here, do we have the resources and the technology to prevent a major disaster? The cost of the Chernobyl disaster was eight billion rubles and still rising when reported. The Three-Mile Island accident, an earlier disaster that was far more dangerous than was made public, cost a conservative $2.1 billion, including cleaning up, entombment and decommissioning.
After flying over an evacuated village in Chernobyl, Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Gurbayev wrote, ?The sun was shining brightly and everything was brilliant white. But in the village, there was no life. Not a single path to be seen across the snow, not a single chimney smoking.? This was after 135,000 people and 86,000 head of cattle were evacuated from the 30-km diameter zone in an evacuation column consisting of 1,216 large buses and 300 trucks stretched over 15 km rushing pell-mell out of the disaster area, a 1,000-sq km patch of contaminated land around the Chernobyl reactor. More than 60,000 buildings in 500 residential communities required decontamination. Three million curies of cesium-137 or uranium radionuclides fell, an amount comparable to the fallout from all atmospheric weapons tests to date. Studies showed that globally, up to one million people may die from cancer induced by exposure to radiation from Chernobyl. This does not include other grave health problems such as nonfatal cancers, mental retardation or genetic abnormalities of humans borne with flipper-size limbs, piglets without eyes and calves with eight legs.
Bataan is only 35-km wide. Manila is no more than 30 km away from Bataan?s eastern shores. The easterly winds (?amihan?) normally blow through Bataan toward Vietnam. But the southwest monsoon winds (?habagat?) can turn mean and blow the deadly air toward the east or north. We find little comfort in that people of Manila and the province of Bulacan or Zambales and Pampanga will join people of Bataan as victims of the deadly radiation fallout roulette.
Contrary to some claims, nuclear energy is not clean. Nuclear waste is deadly and cannot just be dumped. The process of creating nuclear fuel doesn?t work in the reverse. Uranium cannot be dispersed back into ore and buried. Newsweek has reported that ?so potent is the fear of nuclear material that the US government has not yet found a state to accept it. NIMBY (Not in my backyard) has become NOPE (Not on planet earth). Meanwhile, technicians of nuclear plants have to maintain the pumps that carry away waste heat, watch the gauges, and patrol fences 24 hours a day. For how long? For 10,000 years or until governments find sites for nuclear waste dumps, whichever comes first.?
Felicito C. Payumo is a former chair/administrator of Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, and a three-term representative of the first district of Bataan where the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is located.
