TO help counter recession, the government is examining a range of productivity-enhancing measures. In this context, the National Power Corp. (Napocor) has engaged a Korean firm to study the feasibility of reviving the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). Indeed, we must enhance our nation’s ability to foresee and respond to increasingly complex threats, and to plan for major, long-range contingencies.

Some of these contingencies—such as a dramatic shortfall in power generation—may seem remote, but they arguably can shake our economy to its core. They therefore demand our attention.

Any plan to revive the BNPP, however, should not rest on economic terms alone. It must take into full account a range of social, political, cultural and technical issues. And all these must be considered and debated at the highest levels of the executive and legislative branches of government, not at the corporate level of Napocor or the Department of Energy.

The financial aspects of reviving the BNPP would be daunting. The country lost $2.3 billion on this white elephant, excluding the $155,000 a day in interest paid over a 30-year period.

At the current exchange rate, the cost of BNPP’s rehabilitation is likely to exceed a billion dollars—or roughly 36 percent of the estimated P114 billion needed to shield the country from the crippling effects of recession. And that’s just for starters.

Also factor in the externalities of the Bataan plant’s operation. These externalities include the inherent dangers that the plant poses, the enormous dilemma over spent radioactive waste of over 100 tons yearly that will inevitably impact on health and on reproduction through genetic mutations. There is also the financial and technological demands of building and maintaining a low-accident risk facility.

There are 493 operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) in the world today; only 33 of these are less than 10 years old. All are without adequate final storage. More NPPs, therefore, mean more waste to threaten the integrity of fragile ecosystems and human societies for thousands, even millions, of years.

There is a renewed interest in NPPs because they emit less greenhouse gases. But we should remember that, following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, a safety audit of the BNPP revealed some 4,000 defects. Nuclear plants require a very long and high degree of safety culture which does not exist in our country at this time.

Without waiting for the outcome of Napocor’s study, we should look at the energy options that pose no peril to our people and help prevent the creeping climate change catastrophe: Renewable energy sources—wind, solar, geothermal, ocean tides and bio-mass—may be far, far cheaper and safer prospects for our country.

Global warming and climate change warn us that we live in a fragile world.

—HEHERSON T. ALVAREZ, presidential adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change