It is time for the nuclear discussion

Business Mirror

When you go beyond all the feel-good and meaningless rhetoric about "The Environment," maintaining a sustainable and habitable world that does not look like a Mad Max movie is complex.

The Sierra Club is an environmental organization in the United States founded in 1892. The group has done an admirable job in the last 100 years to make people aware and actually get laws passed to protect the environment from overuse and abuse. However, things are more complicated in the 21st century.

The Sierra Club has its "Beyond Coal," "Beyond Natural Gas" and "Beyond Oil" campaigns. That does not leave much else to produce electricity. And, of course, "The Sierra Club remains unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy." But it was not always that way.

The Sierra Club would like to forget what its position was on nuclear energy not too long ago. In 1966 David Siri, the executive director of the Sierra Club, wrote: "Nuclear power is one of the chief long-term hopes for conservation." Even more recently in 1983, famed nature photographer and Sierra Club Director
Ansel Adams said, "Nuclear energy is the only practical alternative that we have to destroying the environment with oil and coal."

California is shutting down its last nuclear power-generating facility. The Diablo Canyon plant produces about 6 percent of California's power needs and more than double all of the state's solar panels combined. And California has a lot of solar panels, thanks to large government financial subsidies.

Reliable and inexpensive electricity is vital for a nation's economic growth. The Philippines must look to an "all-of-the-above" approach, even as we move from coal-fired generation plants. Solar and wind must both be part of the equation. But so might nuclear power.

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is still fresh on people's minds. But that disaster was inevitable from the day that facility was planned. Built at the wrong location and subject to design changes that put emergency generators supplying cooling water not high enough above ground level caused the disaster; not the inherent dangers of any power plant.

France has 58 running nuclear facilities supplying 75 percent of that nation's power. China has 33 nuclear-power reactors in operation, 21 under construction and more in planning stages. Nuclear-power capacity worldwide is increasing steadily, with over 60 reactors under construction in 15 countries. South Korea has 25 units in operation, three under construction and eight planned. India has 21 units producing electricity, six more under construction, has plans for 22 more. Even in Southeast Asia, Vietnam plans six; Thailand is planning five reactors; Malaysia wants two; and Indonesia is looking at five nuclear plants.

To say that the Philippines is incapable of building and operating even one nuclear facility is also to say that the nation is incapable and incompetent. We cannot address our massive poverty issue, which depends in large part, both directly through low-cost home electricity and also for manufacturing. It is time to have a serious discussion about nuclear power based on fact and not emotional myths and hysteria.

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