Nuke

Before anything else, put aside the wild idea that “green” technologies will liberate us from the power crisis.

At the present stage of scientific development, none of the newfangled “green” technologies will provide us with enough baseload capacity to support our economic growth. We may blanket the entire archipelago with costly solar panels and still suffer supply shortfalls. It will be more economical to buy a hundred nuclear plants than build all the windmills needed to generate the equivalent electricity we need.

If we wait for energy technologies to develop further and for costs to drop, we will do so in darkness. We will have to forego opportunities to improve our capacity for wealth creation. The poverty that implies will warp our culture, penalize our people and probably spark upheavals.

All we have available at present for keeping a reliable power supply in place are conventional power sources: bunker oil and coal.

Unfortunately, we are an archipelago with small islands that cannot build large rivers. We can never generate the awesome (and cheap) hydroelectric power that China will acquire when its Three Gorges dams come into full operation. The best possibility we have is to dam the Chico River — which government tried to do in the seventies but eventually surrendered to the force of public resistance.

Even with so much hydroelectric capacity, it must be mentioned, China is in the process of building a score of coal-fired and nuclear power plants to ensure its energy security.

We are the second largest geothermal energy producer in the world. That might sound spectacular — but the electricity we generate from this renewable source is hardly enough to support the needs of a populous province. 

It is nice to daydream about having an economy powered entirely by renewable energy sources. We all love clean air and safe power generation. But we also want to be in the mainstream of the energy-intensive civilization mankind has evolved. We want electricity around the clock and large factories to employ our people.

There is, of course, the option of going Bhutan’s way. The small Himalayan kingdom achieved a consensus to maintain the natural environment even if this means staying primitive.

Except for the marginal groups of ecological fundamentalists, we are unlikely to evolve the same consensus. We can never return to the pristine age when we were all fishermen by day and mythmakers at night. There are simply too many of us and we can no longer be supported entirely by farming and fisheries. We have to create wealth using energy-intensive means.

In order to create the wealth to redeem us from crippling poverty, we have to make imperfect energy choices. We have to use imported bunker fuel or burn coal to create the electricity we need.

Hydrocarbon fuels are entirely imported and subject to the vagaries of global supply and demand. Coal is of such bulk that transporting the material is a major cost factor.

Unfortunately, electricity cannot be stored. It must be used as soon as it is created. It dissipates when delivered over long distances — a phenomenon described as “systems loss.”

We need continuously generating power plants that produce electricity even during those times of the day when no one wants it. The electricity generated even when demand is below peak is simply discarded. There is no way to avoid that. We cannot restart power plants every morning and shut them down at night.

The economics of electricity adequacy is a most complex one. The mix of energy sources defines total generation costs subdivided into units of energy actually purchased by consumers. That always includes the cost of unused energy during off-peak hours.

Add to generation costs the expense of transmitting electricity and all the systems losses incurred in the process. Add further the financing costs involved in the capital-intensive business of power provision. It is easy to see that the closer the generation plant is to the consumers, the less the systems loss.

Coal fired plants are a logical, if imperfect, option for Mindanao. There are good coal sources in the island and power plants may be built close to the coal mines to reduce transport costs. But the environmentalists frown on that option.

As we move closer to the power summit, more people have suggested the deployment of nuclear power plants. But there is a strong public orthodoxy, no matter how scientifically unfounded, against the use of this option.

Several local executives have expressed willingness to host a nuclear plant in Mindanao. No other power source can generate electricity more cheaply and more cleanly than nuclear plants. They use small amounts of fuel with negligible transport costs, although the proper disposal of radioactive waste might be a long-term cost and safety issue.

For decades, we have spent millions everyday just keeping the Bataan nuclear plant mothballed. We have by now probably spent more keeping that plant mothballed than we originally spent building it.

First the Bataan plant was a monument to corruption. Now it is also a monument to a public phobia for an otherwise tenable source of energy. We have spent billions maintaining a plant that has yet to generate a single kilowatt of power.

Perhaps the suitable time has come to review our policy on nuclear power. There are clear voices arguing its merits, including that of Agham party-list representative Angelo Palmones and Mark Cojuangco.

 The public and this chronically uncourageous administration should finally lend those voices an ear.