NOW WE KNOW, WHY NOYNOY WENT TO SOUTH KOREA

Aquino makes U-turn on nuke plant budget

By Christine F. Herrera | Posted 5 hours ago | 226 views
Manila Standard

Defyng his Cabinet officials’ advice, President Benigno Aquino III ordered the restoration of the P50-million budget to maintain the mothballed 620-megawatt Bataan Nuclear Power Plant shortly before his state visit to South Korea, which operates 23 nuclear plants.
The budget restoration was confirmed by Pangasinan Rep. Kimi Cojuangco, who was officially informed by Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, who withdrew his order to the National Power Corp. to recall the personnel in charge of maintaining the facility.
Cojuangco said the removal of the maintenance budget would have paved the way for the permanent closure of the plant in 2014.
Cojuangco said Abad had told her that the President’s order was made while the President was in Zamboanga supervising the siege on Moro rebels there.
Lidy Nacpil, lead convenor of the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice and vice president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, and Francis dela Cruz of Greenpeace Southeast Asia, protested the budget restora-tion.
“We have been demanding that the BNPP be decommissioned a long time ago. We are only being saddled with a totally useless and dangerous nuclear plant,” Nacpil told the Manila Standard.
Nacpil said there was no technology that could ensure the safety of the plant, citing the recent Fukushima tragedy in Japan as a result of the tsunami that hit the country two years ago.
Cojuangco’s BNPP bill in the 15th Congress had already garnered the support of some 197 congressmen when the nuclear plant accident in Fukushima, Japan occurred.
“No one died from the Fukushima nuclear plant accident. We have learned a lot from it and we want to reassure the public that it will not happen to us in the Philippines,” Cojuangco’s husband and former
Pangasinan congressman Mark Cojuangco said.
In fact, he said, two of South Korea’s nuclear plants the Kory1 and Kory2 used a similar design but cost $6 billion.
The BNPP, he said, had been fully-paid in 2007 at a total cost of $2.12 billion.
The Cojuangcos said the BNPP, once rehabilitated and operating, would bring down the cost of electricity to as low as P2.50 per kilowatt hour, as against the prevailing P11 per kwh in Luzon because the coal or diesel fuel was expensive compared to the more efficient and cleaner technology of the BNPP.
“It is about time that we run the BNPP. It is unfair to the future generations if we throw away the $2.1-billion asset that the Filipinos now own and deprive our children of good future,” the congresswoman said.
But Nacpil was adamant.
“When then President Cory Aquino decided to honor the debt, it was like we had thrown good money after bad. Now that the son, President Noynoy Aquino decided to continue maintaining the plant, instead of de-commissioning it, we are being thrown from the frying pan into the fire,” she said.
She and Dela Cruz demanded an explanation from Mr. Aquino.
“The President ought to clarify why he favors the reinstatement of P50-million maintenance of the BNPP. Does it mean that this administration is considering the resurrection of this monument to man’s folly? We certainly hope not,” Dela Cruz said.
Before the President countermanded his order, Abad had reminded the National Power Corp. that no more maintenance funds would be released for the nuclear power plant.
The BNPP is manned by nuclear engineers and a staff of about 30 with 28 security guards protecting the entire 356-hectare complex and the nearby 44-hectare Nuclear Village.
During a budget hearing, Cojuangco invoked Executive Order 55 issued by the late President Corazon Aquino “assigning the National Power Corp. as caretaker of the BNPP until the national government shall have studied on what to do with it,” Cojuangco said.
“I don’t think that EO 55 was ever superseded or repealed,” she told the House committee on appropriations.