The spectre of electricity shortages in the Philippines next year is sharpening the debate on whether nuclear power should become part of the country’s mix of energy sources in the future.
In the strongest indication yet that President Benigno Aquino’s administration will embark on a nuclear energy programme before its term ends in 2016, energy chief Jose Almendras this week said it has now become a ‘real option’.
Also, in a report released on Monday on the country’s business outlook, seven foreign chambers of commerce in the Philippines urged Mr Aquino to include nuclear power in his energy policy plan.
The business group, which includes firms from the United States, European Union and Japan, warned that the current situation of ‘unreliable, expensive electric power is a major deterrent to foreign investment’.
While other energy-thirsty countries in Southeast Asia are forging ahead with plans to build nuclear power plants, the Philippines is lagging behind. But Mr Almendras said funding is being sought from Congress to begin a comprehensive study on what it would take to start a nuclear power programme.
‘We believe it is the cheapest and the most sustainable for a future portion of our electricity baseload,’ he told a media briefing on Monday.
The Philippines was once a trailblazer for the region in nuclear power. Back in 1976, the Marcos regime commissioned US firm Westinghouse to build a 620MW pressurised water reactor at Napot Point, a three-hour drive south of the capital Manila.
But safety concerns - the US$2.3 billion (S$3 billion) Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was built near an earthquake fault line - and a financial scandal caused the plug to be pulled on the reactor, which was completed in 1984, before it could generate a single watt of electricity for commercial use.
The plant has been mothballed since. Its seemingly well-preserved equipment is tagged with labels from periodic inspections by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
‘The plant is safe and we would like to see it out of mothballs,’ Mr Mauro Marcelo, head of the National Power Corporation’s asset preservation unit, told The Straits Times on a visit there in August.
But Mr Aquino is known to oppose this option.
Mr Almendras said the reservations were explained to IAEA officials at a meeting in Manila earlier this month. ‘The prospects for nuclear power in the Philippines are real, but plants must be placed in locations which are not seismic sensitive,’ he said.
While it would take several years to develop a nuclear energy programme, the country’s economic hub of Luzon island is bracing itself for power shortages next year, based on official projections of electricity demand during the hottest months between March and June.
This year, daily brown-outs lasting several hours have hit the southern island of Mindanao after hydro plants there were affected by a severe dry season.
Years of under-investment in the energy sector are taking their toll. The Philippines has 15,700MW of installed electricity capacity serving some 90 million people, compared with Thailand’s 40,700MW for its population of 67 million. Many of the Philippines’ coal-fired power plants - which generate 30 per cent of the country’s energy needs - are ageing.
Although renewable energy sources such as geothermal power also account for about a third of generating capacity, experts say the Philippines does not have large unused geothermal fields to develop.
Nobody is expecting a return just yet of the crippling power crisis of the early 1990s during the presidency of Mr Aquino’s late mother Corazon Aquino. But as an editorial in The Philippine Star said: ‘It is now up to the second Aquino administration to deal with the neglect.’
