Outsize cost—and risks

Perhaps it’s appropriate that news of President Duterte’s green light for the rehabilitation of the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) came in the midst of the public outrage over the Supreme Court’s upholding of the planned burial of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ remains in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. If there is an enduring symbol, after all, of the staggering plunder that marked the Marcos regime, the concrete monstrosity sitting on 389 hectares of the coastline in Morong, Bataan, more than qualifies.

Read on…

Comments

  1. manuelbuencamino

    People do not ask enough questions about nuclear waste, where are they stored etc. If one bothers to do even just a cursory google search one will see that nuclear waste storage/disposal is a problem that as yet has defied a permanent solution. The nuclear power industry does not like to talk about it. But where on earth can thousands of tons of nuclear waste be stored safely in containers and sites that will remain stable and secure for thousands of years? There is no site in the world they can point to where they can guarantee safe storage. As of today, waste is piling up and they are just piling them in relatively safe places like abandoned salt mines and such. So okay you can build a perfectly safe nuclear power plant but where will you store all waste materials?

  2. ricelander

    The Philippines would spend the next 30 years paying off the BNPP debt, representing its biggest international credit obligation for over a generation.
    ______________________________

    And not a watt produced. It actually explains how we went bankrupt after 1986. My very rough estimate is we paid about half a trillion pesos all in all, all that taxpayers’ money washed down the drain tsk tsk tsk

    I wonder. How did it get the go from the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1986 if it was then unsafe to operate?

  3. BEN KRITZ: Someone should have done the Philippines a huge favor and bulldozed that wretched monument to Marcos folly a long time ago, then we would not be continually having the debate over whether or not using the plant for the purpose it was intended more than 30 years ago is a good idea. That debate has only carried on for as long as it has because the BNPP exists, not because the Philippines actually has a real need for or any capacity to operate a nuclear power plant. No BNPP, and the topic of nuclear power would not be raised nor be missed.” FOOLS RUSH IN
    http://www.manilatimes.net/fools-rush-in/296600/