The Thin Line between Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons

The massive power crisis the country is presently experiencing leads some of our government people to rethink and reconsider nuclear power.

The government is now reportedly canvassing 12 possible locations for nuclear power plant projects, receiving entreaties from two foreign power conglomerates – Korea’s Korean Electric Power Corp. and an undisclosed French firm.

We all know that the plan would not stand a bit of a chance not only that Filipinos are often aversive to anything that has “nuclear” on it but also because of the very high cost of putting up one, having a price tag between $6 Billion to $10 Billion each.

In the 1970’s the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was mothballed due to very widespread public disproval albeit the sky-high expense that was put up to bankroll it, sinking our national finances in a quagmire of foreign debts.

So NAPOCOR would probably be sticking it out with floating power barges to help augment power supply across the country, especially in Mindanao.

The construction of coal-powered power plants are also in the offing, despite the foreseen hazards coal power plants could bring the environment.

On the one hand, the potentialities of nuclear power plants are such a very tempting proposition as they can mostly solve every other power scarcity problem, easily providing a utopian energy source, one that is not dependent on water level or world prices of petroleum.

Most developed countries like America (and even earthquake-prone Japan) depends much on nuclear power plants to power their homes and industries, about 20% of their energy requirements comes from uranium-powered power plants. Total nuclear energy output in 2009 amounted to 15% of the world total.

In the economic mindset, stable and continuous power supply becomes ultimately elemental in sparking and keeping up economic progress and growth. Power failure or energy supply instability is one major reason why the Philippines is lagging so far behind its other Asian neighbours in terms of foreign direct investments.

This is perhaps the reason why our government now has come to the point of nuclear contemplation.

Our constitution does not basically prohibit the installation of nuclear power plants in our territory but only the use, transport or storage of nuclear weapons.

Accordingly, Section 8 of Article 2 of the 1987 Constitution provides and states:

“The Philippines, consistent with the national interest, adopts and pursues a policy of freedom from nuclear weapons in its territory.”

Despite that we are prone to earthquakes (the Philippines being part of the Pacific Ring of Fire), making nuclear power plants so extremely risky and unsafe—- no existing law could hinder or prohibit the government from engaging foreign investors for the construction of nuclear power plants here in our country, most probably through the build-operate-and-transfer mode of acquisition.

These power plants are envisioned not merely to bolster our country’s power supply exponentially but they should completely eradicate power scarcity problems of our country altogether and once and for all.

And besides, nuclear energy could make power cheaper and more expeditious in the long run.
Yet in the final analysis, the attempt to put up nuclear power plants here in our country may still be in contradiction to the very strong national emphasis on being a nuclear-free state, despite that they are not for military purposes, for the very process of energy generation within these plants generally produces weapon grade materials as by-products or end-products like enriched Uranium and Plutonium, those that can actually be used and recycled as nuclear warheads.

This situation easily undermines national security (as well as global and regional security for that matter) as these very dangerous by-products of nuclear power plants can possibly fall into the hands of unscrupulous individuals and be used for ultimately malevolent means, creating possibly a very tempting underground blackmarket for them. This is where the supposedly undisruptive energy generation utility of nuclear power plants could redound or be tantamount to harnessing nuclear weapons potentialities.

Therefore, we’d be so very much better off without any nuclear power plant within our midst. We’d rather go for coal-fuelled power plants at least for this time for while they should be so troubling to our environment, clearly they’re the lesser evil by the longest mile.