RP lags in regional nuclear power race

CLARK FIELD (PLDT/WeRoam) — While the neighbors are busy erecting nuclear power plants to meet the heightened demand for power in a competitive investment market, Filipinos sit in a dark corner still burning coal to produce steam for generating electricity.

Earlier it was Malaysia in our region, now it is Vietnam planning to build also its first nuclear plant. Napag-iiwanan na yata tayo!

During his state visit to Vietnam last week, President Noynoy Aquino must have heard of his host’s signing a $5.6-billion deal with Russia for a two-reactor plant planned to start operating in 2020.

Their plans call for four reactors, with a total capacity of 4,000 megawatts and at least one of them operational in 10 years. (Philippines’ current capacity is around 10,500 mw.)

Even Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan, also on a visit to Hanoi, announced with his Vietnamese counterpart that their countries will work together to build two other nuclear reactors.

With the influx of major investors (Intel has just plunked in $1 billion), Vietnam needs a boost in power capacity. Its direction appears to be nuclear, which is widely regarded as the cleanest, safest and cheapest source (compare its P2.50 per kilowatt-hour to the P8.50/kwh of our coal-powered plants).

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NUCLEAR OPTIONS: The Philippines under martial rule built a 621-megawatt Westinghouse-supplied light water nuclear generator in Morong, Bataan. When it was nearly complete in 1984, its cost had reached $2.3 billion.

Overtaken by the 1986 Edsa Revolt, the project was struck down by President Cory Aquino. She had an aversion for things smudged with the fingerprints of one Ferdinand Marcos. Besides, a list of nuclear safety concerns was too long to brush aside.

The guessing game now is whether or not Cory’s president-son Noynoy will rehabilitate the mothballed Bataan power plant and at least light a candle rather than curse the gathering darkness.

Talk is rife — but still unconfirmed — that with our power plants wearing down, with no new ones coming up fast, and with the demand for electricity catching up on the erratic supply, a power crisis may hit the country next year.

If President Aquino wants to go nuclear, his options are to rehabilitate the Bataan plant at $8-$10 billion over two years or build a new one, maybe in the centrally located Visayas, which can be on-stream in 10 years.

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SOVIET LOAN: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev witnessed the signing of the contract that kicked off Hanoi’s plan to build eight nuclear facilities in the next two decades in a bid to jump ahead in the regional race for investment locators.

The Soviet Union has been Hanoi’s benefactor since the Vietnam War ended in 1975.

Recalling that war . . . Viet Cong guerrillas in pajama-like peasant garb and sandals fashioned out of old tires liberated Saigon (now renamed Ho Chi Minh after the ascetic leader of then North Vietnam), forcing the massive evacuation of US personnel and Vietnamese collaborators.

In globo-cop fashion, Americans stepped in when the French scampered out of Vietnam after their expeditionary corps was routed in Dien Bien Phu in 1954 by Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. Uncle Sam inherited an unwinnable war.

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MILITARY BOOST: After destroying Vietnam’s forests, poisoning the land, bombing the nation virtually back to the Stone Age, and still losing the war despite all that hell and fire, the US returned to the scene of the crime — this time to help the Vietnamese rise from the ashes.

But the US will have to jostle not only with Russia, Vietnam’s ideological soul-mate, but also with Japan and the nostalgic French who cannot resist lingering in their former colonial outpost in Indochina.

While we in Manila now see our US-made military aircraft and ships being retired by poor maintenance and inadequate funding, Vietnam is acquiring from Russia 20 Sukhoi fighter jets. Last December, Moscow also signed a contract to sell it submarines! Submarines!!

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UPDATES: To help update readers on the power situation, we pass on these notes from Marcial Ocampo, tireless hands-on technical resource person:

The ongoing projects are the 50-100-mw lignite coal-fired CFB in Cauayan, Isabela, of PNOC-EC which is encountering local/LGU acceptance problems; the 250-500-mw Malampaya natural gas-fired CCGT Greenfield (possible location in Rosario Cavite, Sucat Paranaque, Cabuyao Laguna, Calamba Laguna or Lipa Batangas) of PNOC-EC, the 150-mw Kanan River Hydro Project of SK E&C for Meralco, the coal-fired plant of GN Power in Bataan (formerly natural gas/LNG-fired) and another coal-fired plant in Subic of Aboitiz.

In the Visayas, a number of mini-hydro and coal-fired plants are being developed or under construction.

For Mindanao, the 70-140-mw coal-fired CFB in Surigao del Sur of Benguet Corp.’s coal mine is obtaining approvals from top management and regulatory agencies.

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CUTTING COSTS: Still from Ocampo — Nuclear power can lower the generation cost and minimize tariff increase arising from the Renewable Energy Charge (REC) that will be collected from all end-users and paid to all renewable energy developers through the feed-in tariff (FiT) mechanism in the order of over P10-P11/kwh.

The conventional power from the grid is around P4-P5/kwh (large hydro, geothermal, natural gas, coal, oil/diesel). Since the FiT will be diluted in the grid, the resulting universal-type charge (REC) will not impact that much in the final cost to end-consumers.

But we need nuclear power (P2.50/kwh) to reduce the impact of RE generation and to make our cost of power competitive in the region. Without nuclear power, our cost of power can never be competitive.

Oil will become scarce in 40-60 years, natural gas in 50-60 years, and coal in 250 years.

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