Nuclear option

The Aquino administration needs to deal with this matter with a little more urgency — if that is at all possible.

Next year it is nearly certain that Luzon will suffer from prolonged rotating brownouts. That will be because the demand for power will overtake the existing generating capacity to meet that demand. Should some of the major plants conk out unexpectedly, the economic pain will be greater.

It is unseemly to expect we could run our aging plants at full throttle and be confident none of them will break down. On this matter, Prayer Power will not likely work either. God only helps those who help themselves.

On the energy front, we have not been helping ourselves very well. We have not framed and executed well a strategic energy plan for the nation. In the past years, we have resorted to stopgap measures to cure an energy crisis. We rely on diesel plants because they are the quickest to build — although not the cheapest to operate.

When the rotating brownouts begin rolling in, we will all recall the Aquino I period.

As soon as Cory Aquino assumed power in 1986, she ordered the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant mothballed. For good measure, she abolished the Ministry of Energy, the agency tasked with planning for our energy needs. Not surprisingly, years of severe power shortages followed. The years of brownouts crippled our economy and caused even more Filipinos to fall below the poverty line.

If Cory really hated nuclear power, she should have ordered the Bataan plant immediately scuttled rather than mothballed. Mothballing cost us, on top of the wasted plant, maintenance expenses running into many millions of dollars each year.

It is now a quarter of a century since we mothballed the Bataan plant. We have not generated a single watt of electricity from it even as we spent billions of dollars to purchase the technology and finance the plant. It is now surely the most expensive nuclear plant in the world — because not only have we not recovered anything from the sunk cost, we added to our expense the cost of mothballing.

Since we have allowed so much time to lapse, the technology is probably wasted. We are spending so much to mothball a useless facility. It will probably cost us more to crank up this plant than to build a new, more modern one.

Many other countries have used the same model power plant we bought from Westinghouse. They have since recovered their investments through efficient power generation. Those same plants are now on the verge of retirement while we still nurse our plant for some unknown purpose.

To date, we have spent more keeping this inutile plant mothballed than what the technology and plant cost us in the first place. No nation has maintained such a stupid energy policy than we have.

Today, we face the need to forge a clear policy decision on power sourcing. Do we build more diesel plants or adopt nuclear technology and somehow crank up the Bataan plant?

Diesel plants are the most expensive way to generate electric power. They rely on imported, increasingly expensive and dirty fuel whose long-term supply is doubtful. Some might call them “safe” — until they begin a green accounting of the social costs brought about by their intolerably large carbon footprint.

Because our electricity generation is, in the main, accounted for by diesel plants (and then by coal-fired ones) the price of power is very high. The high electricity costs we endure have already forced a hollowing out of our manufacturing sector. It is insane to invest in any energy-intensive industry here and then expect to survive competition with products coming from cheap energy countries.

The dwindling of our manufacturing sector (coupled with the absence of a population program) explains the high rate of unemployment in our economy. That, in turn, explains the high rate of poverty.

Our energy policy will make or break our economic future. It deserves the hard thinking and the hard choices that must be made to make it saner.

Last week, while all the ASAEN leaders were in Hanoi, Vietnamese leaders sat down with their Russian counterparts and signed an agreement for the purchase of several nuclear power plants. By acquiring nuclear energy, Vietnam signals its intention to keep its strong economic growth going well into the future.

Last year, while at Abu Dhabi, I was surprised to find out this oil-rich emirate decided to acquire nuclear power as well. This emirate cultivated a qualified bureaucracy capable of looking far into the future.

Japan runs on nuclear power. So does South Korea. All over Europe, nuclear power provides critical baseload generating capacity.

We can no longer afford to quibble about adopting nuclear capacity. It is safe. It is cleaner and cheaper than fossil fuel.

Of course, we should continue to expand our geothermal facilities and improve our use of natural gas for power generation. Wind and solar generation captures the imagination but can only provide us token supplies of power.

The main hindrance to our adoption of nuclear power is political, not technical nor financial. In which case, expanding our energy options requires an ample amount of political will — which might be what we lack most after cheap electricity.