With another energy crisis threatening to plunge the country into darkness and cripple the economy in a couple of years or so, some congressmen are looking at the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) to provide part of the solution. Rep. Mark Cojuangco of Pangasinan province has filed a bill seeking to allocate $1 billion for repair and rehabilitation of the BNPP, which was junked in 1986 by his aunt, then-President Corazon Aquino. But this proposal to revive the BNPP has only revived bitter memories about a project that turned out into not only the country’s biggest debt burden but also its biggest monument to corruption.

Started in 1975 at an estimated cost of $600 million, the plant was completed in 1984 at a cost of $2.3 billion, its price bloated by commissions paid to middlemen, like Ferdinand Marcos’ golfing crony Herminio Disini, and kickbacks and payoffs to top government officials. At one point, it was estimated that the government was paying $300,000 a day on interest alone for the loan that funded the plant’s construction. The debt was not fully paid until 2007, and by then the government had shelled out a total of P64.7 billion, a third of it in interest payments alone. And for all the billions taken out of their pockets, the Filipino people have yet to enjoy one single watt of electricity.

It is this white elephant that Cojuangco and his friends seek to bring back to life. And there is no guarantee this new enterprise will fare differently.

The $1-billion estimate for rehabilitation of the plant seems likely to end up like the $600-million initial estimate for the existing facility — a gross miscalculation. Getting the plant to work is not as simple as scraping off the rust and replacing a few bolts here and there — and that is assuming the plant can still be salvaged after decades of non-use. In fact, some engineers who worked on the BNPP say it has become obsolete and may now be beyond repair. Earlier, in 1992, the US-based National Union of Scientists Corp. found the plant’s defects “so serious and numerous that it would be uneconomical to have it repaired, fixed and possibly ready for operation as a nuclear power plant.” These findings should have been reason enough for Cojuangco and company to rethink their proposal.

How about bringing in a new plant altogether? Sure, there is that option, but $1 billion cannot buy a 620-megawatt plant like the BNPP. A plant of that size now costs about $3.3 billion — before the usual commissions, kickbacks and “tongpats.” Somebody must be dreaming if he thinks the government can raise or borrow that kind of money in these difficult times.

Granting government can find the funds for repair of the old plant or for purchase of a new one, it would still leave the biggest obstacle in place: the safety and environmental concerns that led Ms Aquino to close the BNPP even before it could start operating. Nothing has changed since then. No seismic event has moved Napot Point (where the plant is located) in Morong town in Bataan province out of harm’s way in case a major earthquake strikes or the dormant Mt. Natib erupts. While geologists may continue to debate the safety of locating the plant in Morong — or anywhere in the Philippines, for that matter — the government cannot afford to err on the side of danger.

If Cojuangco believes commissioning the BNPP would reverse years of government neglect and ensure sufficient supply of electricity by 2012, he should check his information again. It cannot be done so soon; more so if a new plant will be brought in, since it would take at least 10 years to build. The country certainly needs some bright ideas to ensure that there will be light in the homes, offices and factories in 2012. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.