A MILITANT lawmaker on Thursday backed President Rodrigo Duterte’s stand rejecting the use of nuclear power in the country.
“This is good and one less of a problem that would haunt Filipinos. The government should instead concentrate more on renewable energy rather than dangerous sources of power like the long mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant,” Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate said.
Zarate maintained he is apprehensive over the renewed interests to open the mothballed BNPP, saying the “dangers and disadvantages far outweigh the presumptive benefits [the reopening] may bring.”
“Numerous issues ranging from health, environment, economics, nuclear contamination, as well as the unsolved problem of nuclear waste disposal are grave concerns that should be taken into consideration by our energy officials before we should think of opening the BNPP,” Zarate said.
“The issues of health risks and environmental damage from uranium mining, processing and transport, the risk of nuclear meltdown or sabotage, and the problem of radioactive nuclear waste cannot just be set aside or ignored,” said Zarate, chair of the House committee on natural resources.
Citing Dr. Giovanni Tapang, convenor of No To BNPP Revival, he said the International Atomic Energy Agency itself had ruled “the BNPP failed the safety location requirement as it is located near Natib Volcano and is very near a fault line.”
“Experts also said that nuclear reactors themselves are enormously complex machines where many things can and do go wrong, and there have been many serious nuclear accidents in the recent years, like the 2011 Fukushima Disaster in Japan,” Zarate said.
“In fact, these experts also argue that when all the energy-intensive stages of the nuclear fuel chain are considered—from uranium mining to nuclear decommissioning—nuclear power is not a low-carbon electricity source. Nor is it cheap,” Zarate said.
“What we need now to have a stable and cheaper power supply is for government to tap more renewable sources of energy, stop the privatization of the remaining state-owned generation facilities like the Agus-Pulangi Hydropower Complex in Mindanao and reacquire the previously privatized power plants,” he added.
Zarate stressed “scrapping the Electric Power Industry Reform Act, which resulted [in] us having the most expensive electric rates in Asia, is a must if we want to be freed from the greed of the energy oligarchs.”