Nuclear power

by Emeterio Barcelon September 8, 2016

http://www.mb.com.ph/nuclear-power/

Is it time to revisit the Bataan nuclear plant? We suffered for years paying for that monstrosity. But there is a time for everything. Nuclear power, no one can deny, is the cheapest source of power that we have. Japan, Taiwan, France, and perhaps a few more countries have sourced most of their power from nuclear. All of them are rethinking their infatuation with nuclear power. Balancing the cheapness is safety.

Japan with all its industrial might found they could not cope with Fukushima. The loss of lives and property was enormous. Many Japanese now will not have anything to do with nuclear power. This should be a double reason for us since we are not technically able to understand and control this wonderful power. Maybe we have not waited enough. Waiting a little more till the safety of nuclear power is experienced by more advance countries than ours.

An added reason is that we are sitting or a mountain of other renewable energies. Our hydro power potential is hardly touched. Mindanao has at least 20 large untapped sources of hydro power. Many rivers are unharnessed for run-of-river power source. The Ilocos region, I understand, has many water falls untapped. The possible problem with these is that during the dry season, they may dwindle to a trickle.

We are already number one, or at least number two, all over the world in harnessing geothermal power. We have volcanoes galore. All we need is a source of water to make these hot rocks give us electricity.

We are a nation of islands and, therefore, salt water is available everywhere. The monkey is in the pipeline. Corrosion of the pipes is the problem in geothermal. Maybe we can coat the insides of our pipes with enamel or some other coat to prevent corrosion. Only a handful of countries have the geothermal resources equal to ours.

Then of course we have photovoltaic solar power. Again we probably have to wait a little bit more until the technology of solar power stabilizes. The cost of solar power has come down steadily over the past ten years. Our waiting may not have to be more than a couple of years. Another problem with solar energy is that it can be harnessed only about a third of the time. Batteries have to store this energy and again the technology here is progressing very fast. We have some Negros capitalists who have ventured into hectares of solar panels. Their investment may still pay off. A cogeneration with hydro may be the best power source and this is greatly possible here in this country.

Other minor renewable energy sources are tide or wave action sources and biomass such as bagasse from cane sugar processing, Napier grass, and even garbage. There may be some opportunity for these sources in the Philippines but they will be small. The important thing at present is not to allow more coal sources. They are easy to build and produce cheap electricity (about P4 for a kilowatt hour) but they are pollutants. In the mean time that we are having shortages of power they may be allowed but in the long run they are not good for the country. A 200-megawatt plant can be put up in less than a year and about four of these are being now put up in Mindanao. On a transition basis we need these coal plants but no more additional ones should be allowed.

More exotic are the potential of deuterium from the Surigao deep and hydrogen from separating it from water or the air. These are still futuristic. We can take the risk of having too much power rather than shortage of electricity.