For almost 32 years, Filipino taxpayers endured that daily due, in interest, until the completion of payment to the plant loan in April 2007. Debt repayment on the plant saddled the country as its biggest single obligation. The plant’s total cost: 2.3 billion dollars.
Construction of the nuclear power plant started in 1976 and was completed in 1984. Designed to produce some 621 megawatts of electricity, it never produced a kilowatt of power.
The nuclear program was meant to bring electricity to the urban and rural poor, as well as support the growth of industry. But the real purpose behind the reactor’s construction was to spur electrification for export-led industrialization and personal consumption by a local elite. Also, electrification during the regime of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos meant legitimizing his political stronghold on the country and making it a tool for his counterinsurgency efforts. Communist and Muslim rebels would be encouraged to come back to the fold of his government if livelihood will be developed with the help of electrification.
The project was meant to prove Marcos’ sincerity in his vow to make the country an industrial hub in the region. This was during the first oil price shock in the early 1970s.
With the project mired in corruption among Filipino government officials and cronies, Marcos chose nuclear power upon US influence. The Westinghouse reactor was touted to be the main strategy for ‘modernity’ in the Philippines.
Under succeeding leaderships after Marcos, the country revisited the possibility of reviving its nuclear energy program, the latest of which was supposed to be a partnership with Japan.
New technology developed by General Electric could afford the Philippines and other developing countries access to cheaper and safer nuclear power with their creation of the next generation of nuclear reactors. Their design incorporates improvements in the cooling systems which take away excess heat and convert the heat energy to electricity via gas turbines.
General Electric’s Gen-III designs has 75% less piping, 80% less control cabling, 60% less valves, 35% less pumps and consume 50% less building space than their predecessors.
Ironically, it was General Electric that the Philippines was dealing with on its first Nuclear Power Plant Project.
But the Filipino people are keener now – of both nuclear reactors and politicians. The lesson of the failed Philippine nuclear project has served them well. They are also more informed on the negative effects of having a nuclear program, having been exposed to international debate on the matter of all things nuclear.
The lesson of the Philippine experience for Southeast Asia should be clear: when scientists and engineers get it wrong in the world’s most advanced economies, the potential for error or mishap in less advanced is magnified. A Javanese or Vietnamese Chernobyl or even Kashiwazaki is, or should be, unthinkable.
If a country, however, does get into a nuclear program, politics should play a minimal role in overseeing the construction of energy infrastructure. The project has to be transparent. It has to involve the people and their organizations.
Governments, however, should not adopt any nuclear programs, in the first place. To this day, there are yet no foolproof ways to assure safety and waste, nuclear’s two most alarming concerns.
Over the long haul, there is no such thing as a successful nuclear program.
Today, Filipinos are totally thankful that the nuclear project failed more than 30 years ago. If it pushed through, the Philippines would not have discovered its successful capabilities in geothermal power and production of natural gas.
Worldwide, the Philippines now ranks second to the United States in producing geothermic energy. And to date, the Philippines has 4.3 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves.
Palinpinon Geothermal power plant Negros Oriental, Philippines. One of the country’s several geothermal plants.
Malampaya gas-to-power off-shore rig platform for natural gas production
5 comments:
please cite your sources for your pictures.
your article is either very emotive or biased toward the current geothermal programs.FANTASTIC!! A geothermal program in operation! CONGRATS!! GAS IS NONRENEWABLE AND CARBON RICH! A reliable,safe nuclear power plant would produce electricity that is also reliable and CHEAP! despite current production,"brown outs" are frequent in the philippnes,and electricity expensive! Nuclear Power ought to be adopted in this country,at least for a localised industrial precinct!his would attract foreign investment in other production,as well as provide a great boost for the poor of this country by lowering median electricity costs!THE FAILURE OF NUCLEAR PROJECT BROKE THE LEGS OF THE PHILIPPINE ECONOMY forcing it on its back!
Totally STUPID ARTICLE! The MARTIAL LAW ERA had already ESTABLISHED THE PHILIPPINES AS THE SECOND LARGEST GEOTHERMAL PRODUCER and yet still not enough to INDUSTRIALISE THE COUNTRY.
AFTER THE FAILURE OF BNPP, the Philippine economics suffered due to EXPENSIVE ELECTRICITY, JAPAN, KOREA, CHINA preferred to invest in countries with cheaper electricity to run their manufacturing industries. They avoided the Philippines and today as a TESTAMENT that Philippines cannot just industrialize due to lack of CHEAPER CLEANER ELECTRICITY.
THE LP PLANNED TO BUILD 21 NEW COAL-POWERED ELECTRIC PLANTS to compliment the DUTERTE administrations which created a lot of controversy due to the plants unthinkable contribution to the detriment of Climate Change. If you know what's happening to China, people are getting sick and dying by the millions because of Coal-powered Plants.
Today, China are in the process of building NEW 50 NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS to respond to their power demand and continues INDUSTRIALISATION.
A study by Gilberto Llanto (2002), Infrastructure Development: Experience and Policy Options for the Future, reveals that during the Marcos Administration, electrification reached 1,270 municipalities/cities, 19,680 barangays and around 2.7 million households in 1986, which represented 45.6 percent of total households.
Almost three decades after Marcos was ousted from power, not only did his successors fail to build a single power plant; but more devastatingly, the nation also saw the aggressive privatization of the energy industry. Foreign players and the local private sectors started to participate in energy projects through privatization and the build-operate-transfer scheme.
As a result, a few oligarchic families amassed billions of profit, while the consumers bore the brunt of shouldering costly power rates. The Philippines has even earned its place as one of the countries with the most expensive power rates in Asia.
It can be recalled that for 13 years, a specific period covered by Marcos's total energy plan for the country made successful by the right combination of regulated and deregulated policies saw the steady, low-cost supply of oil and cheap electricity to consumers.
In that period, the Marcos government, based on indisputable government records, had succeeded in reducing the country's dependence on Middle East oil from 92 percent in 1973 to 71 percent in 1980 and further to 57 percent in 1984. By 1985, the Philippines stood as the world's second-largest user of geothermal power, next to California, resulting further to 44-percent reduction of the country's dependence on imported oil worth billions of pesos.
Marcos' unparalleled achievements in Energy and infrastructure development
Energy
The energy sector plays a key role in the country's economic activities. When energy prices go up, the costs of food, transportation and other basic necessities follow suit. To prevent skyrocketing oil and power rates that would eventually result in high prices of commodities brought about by the 1973 global oil crisis, the government sought to decrease dependence on imported oil by harnessing indigenous sources of energy. As a result, the Marcos regime completed 20 power plants:
Agus 2 Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1979;
Agus 4 Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1985;
Agus 5 Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1985;
Agus 6 Hydro Electric Power plant, recommissioned in 1977;
Agus 7 Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1982;
Angat Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1967;
Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, completed in 1983;
Calaca Coal Power Plant, completed in 1984;
Cebu Thermal Power Plant, completed in 1981;
Kalayaan Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed 1982;
Leyte Geothermal Power Plant, completed 1977;
Magat A Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1984;
Magat B Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1984;
Main Magat Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1983;
Makiling-Banahaw Geothermal Power Plant, completed in 1979;
Masiway Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1980;
Palinpinon 1 Southern Negros Geothermal production Field completed in 1983;
Pantabangan Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1977;
Tiwi Geothermal Power Plant, completed in 1980; and
Pulangi Hydro Electric Power Plant, completed in 1985.
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