Aquino scraps bid to revive Bataan nuclear plant

While nuclear power remains an option to addressing the country’s power needs, the Aquino administration has scrapped proposals to revive the mothballed 600 megawatt Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras said Tuesday. “It's a policy decision of the President that we are not going to open the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant mainly because, in the opinion of the President, there are too much social complexities that have been caused by that," Almendras told reporters during a briefing at the Energy Department headquarters in Taguig City. “Secondly there is this issue of the safety considering the fault line and all," Almendras said, referring to the Bataan facility which sits on a fault line. President Benigno Aquino III’s mother, the late President Corazon Aquino, mothballed the $2.3 billion nuclear facility in 1986 due to safety concerns. Still the Energy department considers nuclear power as part of the country’s future power generation mix. “We are not closed to it. We are evaluating it. We have been told that there have been significant technological advancements relative to safety," he said. The Philippines would have to face the reality that fossil fuels are “not going to be available forever and the price is going to continue to be on the uptrend," Almendras said. “One of the biggest problems of energy pricing in the Philippines today is actually generation cost. You have to consider the generation mix. If we can tweak around the generation mix, and there is an opportunity to bring down prices within acceptable safety standards and social considerations then maybe it's worth looking at it," Almendras said. —VS, GMANews.TV