An expensive white elephant

During the Marcos regime, it was a symbol of corruption and profligacy. After the EDSA revolt, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was mothballed, and the plant became a symbol of the ruin that the Marcoses left behind. In the previous administration, the BNPP was largely forgotten.

Last week, however, the nation was rudely reminded of the BNPP's existence. Surigao Rep. Robert Ace Barbers disclosed that the government is allotting P2.3 billion this year, or about P6.3 million a day, to pay for the debt incurred in constructing the power plant. Barbers pointed out that the allocation is 105 times bigger than the budget of the National Council for the Welfare of the Disabled, 45 times bigger than the budget of the National Anti-Poverty Commission and 14 times bigger than the Philippine Heart Center's subsidy from the national government. The allocation will not be affected by the P22-billion cut in this year's budget.

From June 1996 to April last year, Philippine taxpayers paid P46.4 billion for the BNPP. As of April 1999, the government still owed P11.293 billion on the plant, which will have to be paid until 2018. For maintenance alone, the state-owned National Power Corp. is spending P300,000 a day on the two-reactor power plant. Of the P2.3 billion allocated for the BNPP this year, P1.5 billion will go to amortizations on the principal while the rest is for interest on the loan as well as maintenance.

Controversy hounded the project from the start. There were questions about the safety of a nuclear plant in a country that is part of the so-called Ring of Fire -- an earthquake-prone belt of active volcanoes. The contract price of Westinghouse also soared from the original $1.2 billion to $2.1 billion. When the project was mothballed, there was talk of converting it into another type of power-generating facility, but the conversion cost was always too costly. The latest proposal, from the Philippine National Oil Co., calls for $2 billion in investments to convert the BNPP into a gas-fired power plant.

There must be some use for the sprawling 370-hectare facility in Morong. Two generations of Filipinos are in hock for this white elephant, and the only ones who have been punished for this folly are Philippine taxpayers. The government should at least find a way of making this project generate enough income for debt servicing.