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Prof. Kelvin Rodolfo of the Univ of Illinois' Department of Earth and University of the Philippines published part 1 of his article on the volcanic and earthquake hazards facing the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). The BNPP is in the middle of a controversy between Cong. Cojuangco's Bill to revive the plant and those who oppose it's revival. Opposition to the bill is mounting with the most noise coming from activist group GreenPeace and the powerful Catholic Church Prof Rodolfo's article shows that in the rush to build the powerplant, in order to address the serious energy crisis of 1973, assessment of the geologic hazards inherent in the site were not properly conducted. A study of that proportion would have also entailed a considerable amount of time to complete. It was found out that the BNPP, which is situated in Morong Bataan, sits right on top of a volcanic area. Early on the design phase, alarms raised as to the region having high probabilities of earthquakes occurring due to the volcanic presence were promptly ignored.

The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) that President Ferdinand Marcos had built on Napot Point at the seacoast in the Bataan town of Morong 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. Marcos decided to build the BNPP in 1973, to address the first serious energy crisis that happened that same year. This rushed timing clearly indicates that the natural hazards of the site could not have been assessed properly. Such a study would have taken at least several years.

While he was still at Phivolcs, Dr. Ronnie Torres, a foremost expert regarding pyroclastic flows who is now at the University of Hawaii, warned of volcanism and faulting at the site in a 1992 report, "The vulnerability of PNPP site to the hazards of Natib volcano" (Phivolcs Observer, Vol. 8 No. 3: 1-4). Quoting Dr. Torres: "Natib volcano does not erupt very often but could still erupt." As a rough rule of thumb, the longer a volcano is in repose, the more time it has to store eruptive energy, and thus, the stronger the eventual eruption.

EVERYTHING seems easy to some proponents to make the Bataan nuclear plant generate energy for the first time in the unseen future: 1) only $1 billion R48,500,000,000) is needed and 2) just one of our 7,000 islands for waste disposal will suffice. The tall boast One Filipino geologist claims to be knowledgeable: "Give me one island out of our 7,000 and I can find ways to safely store nuclear waste in the Philippines." He referred to levels of barrier protection system and cited Carlsbad, New Mexico as a model for disposal of nuclear waste. He said we have this attitude of "not in my backyard."

Protesters dressed as skeletons hold placards calling for a halt to the government's plan to revive the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant during a rally at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City.

The Senate and the Office of the President have in their possession an explosive study whose disclosure could very well result in the permanent shuttering of the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant and end moves in Congress to reopen the facility, according to environmentalist Nicanor Perlas. According to Perlas, it is important that the four-year study be made public as Congress has now begun debates on a bill filed by Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco seeking to rehabilitate the BNPP at a cost of $1 billion.

It appears the pope and another ranking Vatican official were misquoted on the use of nuclear energy by a local politician. Pope Benedict XVI supports the use of nuclear energy but only for improving the medical field and helping the poor but not for generating electricity, Balanga Bishop Socrates Villegas said Tuesday.

Members of the Network Opposed to BNPP Revival fear that the planned re-commissioning of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant will spur corruption anew within the country's corridors of power. A report from the network disclosed that while the technical concerns on the plant's site and plant safety have not yet been directly addressed by the proponents, it is not the end or be-all of talks considering BNPP's revival. "One should not neglect other aspects of equal importance: the politics and economics of the project," the network said.

The Philippines may choose to dispose of nuclear waste at the Spratlys Islands should the government proceed with a plan to use nuclear energy. Using the islands as a disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel may even end the dispute over its ownership, said Pangasinan Representative Mark Cojuangco, who authored a House Bill that intends to rehabilitate the country's only nuclear plant in Bataan. Besides the Philippines, a host of other countries including China, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam are claiming dominion over the islands. The disputed territory "can actually be a mechanism for regional peace because [other countries claiming the Spratlys] are looking for repositories of nuclear waste," Cojuangco said in a briefing.

Through a massive outpouring of people in the streets, the Filipino people ousted the regime of the dictator Marcos in February 1986. The event, popularly known as the People Power Revolution, was the culmination of years of mobilizations, protests, strikes and welgang bayan (people's strike) that preceeded the fortituous date. Among these protests was the welgang bayan held in June 20, 1985 which was supported by workers, students, clergy and ordinary residents from Bataan in addition to multitudes of protesters from other provinces. For nearly three days, people from the nearby provinces of Bulacan, Tarlac, Pampanga, Pangasinan and Manila marched toward Morong as part of the people's protest against the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP).

The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) is one of the most controversial projects of former president Ferdinand Marcos. The plant construction began in 1977 despite strong opposition from various sectors because of the risks it poses on the life and health of the people. When Marcos was ousted, the succeeding administration of Corazan Aquino closed down the power plant citing 4,000 defects in its design and construction. Today, the current administration under Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is pushing for the re-opening and rehabilitation of the power plant in Bataan as a solution to the projected "energy crisis" in 2012.

The controversial bill that will revive the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) has been losing steam in the House of Representatives with the withdrawal of support of some of its endorsers, a staunch opponent of the bill claimed on Monday. Etta Rosales, acting president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC), said that House Bill 6300, the consolidated version of the bill sponsored by Pampanga Representative Juan Miguel Arroyo and principally authored by Pangasinan Representative Mark Cojuangco lists only 125 co-authors. The original bill of Cojuangco, House Bill 4631, had 185 co-authors.

State-run National Power Corp. expects Korea Electric Power Co. (Kepco) to submit as early as October this year the results of a feasibility study on the possible rehabilitation of the mothballed 630-megawatt Bataan nuclear power plant. Napocor senior vice president Pio J. Benavidez told reporters that everything was on track as the 12-member Kepco team and government representatives were already doing a system verification process, which is expected to end by September.

THE government needs around $1 billion to rehabilitate and operate the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, an official of the National Power Corp. said over the weekend. Napocor senior vice president Pio Benavidez, who is part of a special team on nuclear energy, said the rehabilitation alone would cost about $800 million. "It is estimated that we could spend around $800 million maximum for the operation of the [plant], but we may need $1 billion including the transmission line. We need to build new transmission lines since the old ones are already dismantled," Benavidez said.

Philippines-As antinuclear plant activists started marching on Saturday to mark the 24th anniversary of the Welgang Bayan against the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), Balanga (Bataan) Bishop Socrates Villegas expressed disgust at President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for considering nuclear power as an energy source. The bishop was reacting to a speech of Ms Arroyo at a meeting of the International Friendship Exchange Council of Japan in Tokyo on Friday where the President said the Philippines was in the process of renewing its energy options, including the use of nuclear power.

Meltdown is not the word you want to hear in relation to a nuclear power plant. Even the global financial meltdown has potentially dire consequences for public safety over the long term. Even as the industry and Washington quite rightly have moved toward a new generation of nuclear plant construction, an analysis by the Associated Press raises troubling questions about the current generation. Nuclear plant operators are required to set aside enough money, over the course of a plant's life, to pay for its decommissioning and demolition. That process, for most plants, costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The AP analysis found that the meltdown in the financial markets over the last two years has drained much of the money held by plant operators to safely decommission and demolish their plants. According to the analysis, operators of about half of the nuclear plants nationwide are not saving enough money for inevitable demolition projects. At the same time that the estimated costs of demolition has risen by $4.6 billion, the value of investments held by plant operators for that purpose has fallen by $4.4 billion, the AP reported. And, it found, the savings rates for demolition has declined for 80 percent of the nation's reactors. So far plant operators have reacted to the losses in two ways. In 19 cases they have won permission to delay decommissioning for as long as 60 years in order to allow their investments to recover. In more than 50 others, they have won permission to extend plant operations beyond their original permit expiration dates.

A bill allocating P100 million for a feasibility study has already "predetermined" results, a member of a multisectoral alliance against the recommissioning and operation of mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) said on Friday. Engr. Roberto Verzola, secretary-general of Philippine Greens, a member of Network Opposed to Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (NO to BNPP), said in a statement that Rep. Mark Cojuangco's H.B. 6300 on the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) has been scheduled by the House of Representatives for plenary debates when it reconvenes in July.

THE Bataan nuclear power plant, which never produced a single watt of electricity but cost taxpayers $155,000 a day for more than 30 years, has been sold for scrap for $2.859 million. A project of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the plant in Morong, Bataan, was completed in 1984 at a cost of $2.3 billion on a debt of $1.06 billion. The plant-which later was found to have been overpriced and unsafe-was mothballed after Marcos was overthrown in 1986, but the debt payments on it continued until April 2007. The Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp., which sells off state-owned power plants, said the Bataan facility was sold through a negotiated sale to Rubenori Inc., a local scrap dealer.

Greenpeace sounded an alert Wednesday over possible hazards that a large ship transporting reprocessed nuclear waste may pose when it passes through Philippine waters next month. The environmental activist group urged the Philippine government to proactively prevent the passage of the waste in the vicinity of the country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in early May. It said about 1.8 tons of radiotoxic plutonium in Mixed-Oxide (MOX) fuel intended for nuclear power plants is traveling to Japan via the Cape of Good Hope and the southwest Pacific Ocean. Greenpeace said the shipment left France for Japan last March 5 and is expected to pass by the waters between the Philippines and Palau before it reaches Japan by mid-May.