This period in history confronts the most crucial challenge in our times: the environmental crisis, brought about by the governments' obsessive rapid industrialization that has minimal regard to the environment.
Environmental problems have never been so threatening than it is now. Since the Industrial Revolution that erupted in the 1850s the world has concerned itself solely with the material gain of production and the advancement of technology for production, that environmental consequences were either suppressed by the governments and corporations or were totally disregarded.
In every society: farmers, workers, and the environment bore the costs of high-speed industrialization. In short, the people bears the burden of a catastrophe which was scientifically predicted but discarded by powerful institutions.
The environmental crisis that we face at the moment is unprecedented in history and very complex. We are faced with an impending shortage of the source of energy which is hardest to replace - liquid fossil fuels.
"The key factor seems to be that the demand for oil is rising much faster than its supply, and this is due fundamentally to the fact that the few old oilfields on which the world relies for most of its oil are being depleted and no new fields have been discovered that can match their production and reserves. Peak oil, which was viewed just a few years ago as a outlandish theory, is now being treated as fact. The second factor pushing up prices is the rush to buy oil futures contracts, a development that is partly determined by the fear that available oil will increasingly become scarce, partly by the desire of investors to park their wealth in oil instead of the declining dollar."
And everything we see around us results from that. We have been able to develop a ingenious way of utilizing this entity that we are here right now enjoying certain freedom and comfort. But we are rapidly losing it.
There have been suggested proposals in replacement of our dependency on oil. Environmental movements around the world have laid down more sustainable alternatives than the use of Nuclear Power Plants for strict environmental reasons.
Kevin S. Rodolpho stated, "The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP)... has an unacceptably high risk of serious damage from earthquakes, volcanism, or both, should it be activated in accordance with a bill currently being considered by the House of Representatives."
The controversial creation of the BNPP was an answer to the first serious energy crisis that happened in 1973 as Middle East oil embargo had put a heavy strain on third world countries. "Under a regime of martial rule, the Marcos government announced its decision to build a nuclear power plant, to be constructed by Westinghouse. Westinghouse clinched the contract through Herminio Disini, a Marcos crony acting as a "special sales representative". Westinghouse bribed Disini and Marcos with at least US$17 million to secure the contract."
It is conspicuous that the creation of this energy supply is more than an answer to a energy crisis. Business comes hand in hand with politics.
When Marcos was overthrown by the so-called People Power Revolution in early 1986 a team of international inspectors visited the site and declared it unsafe and inoperable as it was built near major earthquake fault lines and near the Pinatubo volcano which at the time was dormant. Now, more than 20 years have passed the issue of activating the site is even more precarious. Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes is pushing for its activation even amidst the cacophonous refusal of environmental movements, activists, farmers and students.
The government is obviously blind to the geological hazards that this power plant might bring. It should suffice to look back the early concerns that brought this issue:
"In the 1970s, the volcanic nature of Natib was virtually ignored, but technicians were quite concerned about how earthquakes might affect the plant. Recognition of the dangers that earthquakes posed to the BNPP was recognized very early, but apparently was ignored. A year after construction began, nuclear technologists Elmer Hernandez and Gabriel Santos submitted an alarming eight-page 'Report on the evaluation of the geological and seismological studies made on the Philippine Nuclear Power Plant — I Site' in which they said that the probability of an earthquake occurring there 'is unacceptably very high,' and that 49 significant earthquakes had occurred in the area over 74 years, one within one to two kilometers of the proposed site itself. They also noted the presence of a possible fault in satellite photographs, which they confirmed on the ground with a magnetometer survey.
"But construction continued anyway.
"Nevertheless, the Philippine Atomic Energy Commission was concerned enough to send Prof. Ernesto Sonido, the geophysicist of the UP-Diliman Department of Geology and Geography, to investigate the site further in early 1979. On Jan. 25, Dr. Sonido reported that he and a Mr. John Palmer, the groundwater geological consultant of the contractor firm Ebasco, agreed on site that a fault zone existed in the vicinity of Napot Point. Faulting of otherwise impermeable rocks had made many fractures from which water was seeping. Palmer said that he had drilled more than 30 holes at the plant site. The boreholes encountered a particular rock at different depths, suggesting … 'that the area had been tectonically active.'
"When the plant was designed and built, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the United Nations had not yet made rules governing what must be done to build a plant on volcanic terrain. IAEA announced those criteria only in 1997, three years after volcanologists began to develop them, in the document 'Volcanic Hazard in Nuclear Power Plant Siting — An IAEA Guidance — Provisional Safety Standards Series No. 1.' Had those standards existed in the 1970s, the BNPP would never have been built. And if applied today, the site would be unacceptable to the IAEA."
Now the IAEA made two primary recommendations. "First, the power plant's status must be thoroughly evaluated by technical inspections and economic evaluations conducted by a committed group of nuclear power experts with experience in preservation management. Second, the IAEA mission advised the Philippines Government on the general requirements for starting its nuclear power programme, stressing that the proper infrastructure, safety standards, and knowledge be implemented."
We are in a stand still. We are in a state of turmoil whether this power plant will bring a real source of energy and boost the country's economy. But one thing is clear: whether it will bring a "good" source of energy or it will boost the country's dying economy (and I doubt), the question is: WILL IT NOT COMPROMISE NATURE?
I am not interested in what the fucking government would like to see. I am interested in what the science says.
Excellent report. Permission to repost this to other blog sites to increase awareness about the BNPP? 