DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/08 March) – Senate Minority leader Aquilino Pimentel of Cagayan de Oro said government and the private sector should pool their resources on alternative, indigenous energy sources like solar, wind, sea wave, bio-mass, geothermal and bio-ethanol and not revive the “potentially-dangerous nuclear power plant” in Limay, Bataan.

In a press statement, Pimentel said the Aquino government  (1986 to 1992) “decided not to operate the 620-megawatt Bataan nuclear plant after it was found to suffer from defects and the site lies on an earthquake zone.”

In the same statement, Pimentel also urged the government to look into the possibility of deploying to Mindanao six idle power barges – four owned by the National Power Corporation and two others by the Aboitiz Group – “to stave off the acute power shortage there.”

In opposing the operation of the Bataan nunclear plant, Pimentel said, “Let us not sacrifice the safety of our people. If a high-intensity earthquake occurs while the nuclear plant is operating, even residents of Metro Manila will be in danger of being exposed to nuclear radiation.”

Pimentel urged government and the private sector to instead develop renewable energy sources that will “initially entail huge capital investments but once the physical infrastructures like generating and transmission facilities and processing plants are completed, they will produce power at a much lower cost.”

“Sunrays and wind, for instance, cost nothing,” he said.

As of March 8, the available generating capacity in Mindanao is 762 megawatts for a peak load of 1,441 or a deficit of 679.  Five days earlier, on March 3, only 808 mw were available for a peak load of 1,318 mw or a deficit of 510.

The Mindanao Economic Development Council (MEDCo)  had earlier released a list of generating plants in Mindanao showing that the total generating capacity of the combined diesel, geothermal, hydro and oil thermal is 1,877.73 mw of which 997.65 is from hydro, 457 from diesel, 210 from coal, 108.60 from oil thermal and 104.48 is from geothermal.

If all the power plants were running at full capacity, 1,877.73 mw would have been enough to meet the peak load of 1,441 mw as  of   March 8 and still have a reserve of  436.73.

Presidential Adviser on Mindanao Jesus Dureza told a February 25 meeting of stakeholders that he convened in Davao City that reduction in generation capacity is due to  “El Nino effect; plant maintenance; unit derating; and deactivated shutdown.”

On March 5, President Arroyo accepted recommendations to declare a power crisis situation in Mindanao “to enable her to set in place, upon congressional approval, additional power generating capacity,” Presidential deputy spokesperson  Ricardo Saludo  said in a report of the Office of the press Secretary (OPS).

Saludo said the recommendation came from Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes, following the series of meetings the latter had with energy sector stakeholders.

The President is expected to invoke the crisis power provision of the EPIRA law or the Electric Power Industry Reform Act of 2001, Section 71 which states: “Upon the determination by the President of the Philippines of an imminent shortage of the supply of electricity, Congress may authorize, through a joint resolution, the establishment of additional generating capacity under such terms and conditions as it may approve.”

In his February 27 report to the President, Reyes said that with the significant drop in the electricity generating capability of the hydro electric plants and the absence of new large generation capacities to meet growing demand for power in Mindanao, the DOE recommends the power crisis declaration to the President.

Reyes has clarified, however, that he was not recommending Constitutional emergency powers for the President but merely additional authority under the EPIRA law.

But on February 25, two days before Reyes’ report, Dureza, who met with Mindanao’s power industry stakeholders, had recommended a Mindanao Power Action Center “to ensure that we keep the possibility of a power crisis in Mindanao away from becoming imminent.”

He said that while the current situation is far from being a crisis level, “the widening gap between power generation capacity and surging demand is too serious to ignore.”

Reyes recommended on February 27,  four courses of action “to immediately solve the power supply situation in Mindanao.”

These are: “Lease-rental of 160 megawatt (MW) gensets;  Operation and maintenance of the Alsons Corp.’s 30-MW Iligan Diesel Power Plant 1 (IDPP);  Enter into an operation and maintenance agreement with Alsons Corp. for the 70MW IDPP2 ; and   Contract an additional five MW from Southern Philippines Power Corp. (MW), which is jointly owned by Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Conal Holdings Corp., and Tomen Power Corp. of Singapore, under an existing contract.”

The IDPP which was unavailable since February 1, had gone online on March 2, providing 35 mw to the grid after Iligan Mayor Lawrence Cruz reconsidered re-operating the  plant which Iligan City claims to be its property.

SunStar Cagayan de Oro’s February 24 report quoted Pedro Ambos, officer-in-charge of  the National Power Corporations Planning and Maintenance department based in Ditucalan, Iligan said the two Iligan diesel plants are owned by the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management (PSALM), operated by NPC and recently claimed by the City Government of Iligan to be its property by virtue of auction for non-payment of taxes.

Pimentel said there is no suitable dumping ground for nuclear wastes which remain radioactive for thousands of years.

“If the nuclear wastes are improperly disposed of, they can emit radiation that can contaminate the water that we drink and the air that we breathe,” he said.

“There is a greater possibility that the nuclear plant will cause harm than bring benefits to the people. So I don’t think that is the solution to our power problem,” he said.

Pimentel said even industrially-advanced countries are finding it difficult to dispose of their nuclear wastes.  In the United States, he said nuclear wastes are being disposed of in the deserts of Nevada. But he said the people of Nevada are protesting why even the nuclear wastes from other states are being dumped in Nevada.

Pimentel also said the government should first exhaust all possible measures to beef up the country’s power supply within the scope of powers of the President and the secretary of energy before contemplating on invoking emergency powers.

Pimentel said if the purpose of emergency powers is to enable the executive branch to take the shortcut by doing away with public bidding and other rules in awarding the construction of new plants, the temptation to overprice the projects will be too strong. (MindaNews)

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