One of President Duterte’s “achievements” during his official visit to Russia on October 2, 2019 was a memorandum of intent signed by officials of both countries “to jointly explore the prospects of cooperation in the construction of nuclear power plants in the Philippines.” A proposal to build a floating nuclear power plant in the country was also broached by Russia.
It looks like the paperwork for the project is moving fast, the details of which were drowned out by public concern and issues about the Covid-19 pandemic. This has prompted Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chair of the Senate Committee on Energy, to press the Department of Energy (DOE) to publicly release its report on the integrated work plan for nuclear infrastructure in the county.
“By being transparent, we are telling the Filipinos that the government is serious and committed in discussing and investigating whether nuclear power might be part of the country’s future energy policy,” he was quoted in the news as saying.
There is valid reason to be alarmed. Doubts on the safety of nuclear power still linger, especially since the country’s possible partner in this undertaking had suffered from one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters in 1986 caused by a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel—the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located in the Ukraine which was then still a part of the Soviet Union.
Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi late last year called for the creation of Nuclear Energy Program Implementing Organization (NEPIO) to comply with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) policy guidelines in steering an exploration on the feasibility of nuclear energy development. Gatchalian notes the DOE has yet to provide any specific details of its nuclear energy agenda, and has repeatedly called out the agency for its lack of transparency.
In October last year, Gatchalian chided DOE’s obscurity on its nuclear plan on reports that the Philippines and Russia signed a deal on exploring the possible construction of a nuclear power plant in the country. “The basic question is—is nuclear energy fit for the Philippines?” Gatchalian asked, even as he filed a resolution asking the Senate energy panel to conduct an inquiry on the status of the country’s nuclear energy plan. “Will it deliver the promises of lower electricity cost at very minimal risk? Most importantly, what will we do with the nuclear waste in the long term?”
I understand that the Philippines has to come up with viable energy solutions to prepare for the expected power shortfall the country faces in the near future. But there are other cleaner and safer energy sources that the Philippines can tap and are in fact already in the pipeline. If it were not for the pandemic, these projects would have been operational much earlier than their expected two- to four-year completion.
First Gen Corp., for instance, has been negotiating with various gas suppliers and buyers, having chosen Japan’s JGC Corp. as its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal project in Batangas City. First Gen is in talks with them for short-term supply contracts for the period 2021-2023.
But there’s one project that could have supplied the country with clean energy on short notice if only if it were allowed to. The LNG project of Energy World Corp. (EWC) in Pagbilao, Quezon Province, is almost complete. It remains dormant because it has not been permitted to tap into the existing transmission grid in the area. For years, the company has been seeking government’s help in securing approval to tap into other private firms’ existing transmission grid in the area, to no avail. The company is locked and loaded to add to the country’s energy requirement, if and when it is cleared to do so, while it is building its own transmission line.
EWC Chair Stewart Elliott in the company’s yearly report stated last year that the plant will be operational by late 2021 (this date has been moved because of the lockdown). This only means that the company is confident that its substation currently undergoing construction is near completion. Just the same, if the company were allowed to tap into the existing transmission grid, it could have readily contributed to the country’s energy needs. This project is expected to beef up the country’s power requirement now that the Malampaya gas reserves are about to run out.
The LNG Hub Terminal, the first of its kind in the Philippines, can process 3 million metric tons of LNG per annum, which is sufficient to generate up to 3,000 MW of gas-fired power plants, and even up to 6,000 MW of power when its second tank currently being constructed becomes operational. The project costs over $750 million of direct investment in the Philippines, and has created over 800 direct jobs during the construction period.
According to Cusi, “The country should have a clear position on nuclear power. A well-informed decision is key to a sustainable and comprehensive energy program. With all the new findings, technological advancements and successful experiences of countries around the world, nuclear energy holds much promise for long-term energy plans.”
In the United States a nuclear-power reactor recently opened for the first time in two decades. But this reactor, called Watts Bar Unit 2—one of two near Spring City, Tennessee —isn’t new. Most of it was built in the 1970s and 1980s alongside Unit 1, which came online in 1996 and has performed flawlessly. The two reactors are essentially identical in terms of safety, technology and output. But there has been one major advancement in the 20 years separating their openings: widespread acceptance of fossil fuels’ role in climate change, and the urgent need to wean the economy from it.
This development bolsters the government’s position that going nuclear is a viable, not the only, option to fill in the projected energy gap in the near future. Nuke plants undoubtedly give out clean energy. Because of their zero-carbon emissions, they somehow ease the fears of climate change.
Scientists, policy-makers, and climate strategists have been figuring out what the future of renewable energy will look like. They came up with these options: find a way to clean up coal; build batteries capable of storing energy from capricious renewables, or go nuclear. Each option has its own set of benefits and drawbacks. But nuclear is a strong contender because it is the only technology that actually exists. “We are supposed to be adding zero-carbon sources, not subtracting, or simply replacing, to just kind of tread water,” US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was recently quoted as saying.
BusinessWise, however, believes that nuke plants are multifaceted systems operated by humans, a situation where errors are unavoidable. In the field of nuclear power, human error has often been cited as a cause or contributing factor for numerous accidents and catastrophes, such as flooding, earthquakes and extreme weather conditions, fires, equipment failures, and improper maintenance, among others.
