PHL nuclear program’s revival faces talent hurdle
“I AM NO LONGER interested in the topic,” well-respected professor Jose A. Magpantay of the University of the Philippines’ (UP) National Institute of Physics said in an e-mail reply when BusinessWorld sought nuclear physicists for an interview for this story.
The response of the academician — who with his disheveled salt-and-pepper hair bore resemblance to physicist Albert Einstein and who is regarded by his colleagues as the only expert in nuclear theory and high energy physics at the institute — portends one of the challenges that the Duterte administration faces should it decide to pursue a nuclear power program: human resources.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations, said “specific expertise in nuclear physics and nuclear materials science is crucial for reactor operation and fuel cycle management.” The agency advises countries planning to adopt atomic energy as a source of electricity and has on its Web site e-learning modules that showed it could take first- timers at least 10 years to chart out a nuclear power regime.
It is unclear how large is the Philippines’ existing pool of nuclear physicists and nuclear materials scientists; and where those involved in building the first of the planned two 620-megawatt reactor units at the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant have gone.
The Filipino diaspora — a boon to an economy that faltered in the 1980s and whose 10-million population continued to boost its current account — had repercussions.
“We have long lost many of our experts in using nuclear energy power generation as we have also concentrated much of our efforts in other applications of nuclear techniques in the last few decades,” Carlos Primo C. David, officer-in-charge at the country’s nuclear regulator Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI), told BusinessWorld last week.
An agency under the Department of Science and Technology, PNRI now has eight nuclear physicists “with varying levels of competency,” he said.
“Note that we don’t only need physicists but nuclear engineers, nuclear chemists, etcetera also those that are trained to be nuclear energy regulators,” the PNRI boss said.
AGING POOL
Mired in controversies and overtaken by events (the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disasters), the hulking, dingy tower overlooking the South China Sea has stood dormant since its builder Westinghouse turned it over to the Philippines’ National Power Corporation (Napocor) in 1985.
The reactor facility was ready for “core loading” at that time, said 64-year old Josie Rosie Y. Ricardo, who was one of the roughly 100 chemical engineers who cleared in 1976 use of what is now the site of the Bataan nuclear power plant. They collected various species of fish and other marine life within the plant’s 50-kilometer radius, Ms. Ricardo said, explaining those earlier findings could serve as a “baseline” for a new study.
But 40 years later, copies of the team’s assessment report consolidated by Westinghouse have become “brittle” as they gathered dust, a sobering reminder that there had been a pioneer team — some of them now long gone.
And work might have to return to drawing board after all.
“We are the core group offsite the Bataan nuclear power plant (in the ‘70s),” Ms. Ricardo, now environmental management department manager, said during a Nov. 18 interview at her office in Napocor, Quezon City.
Now nearing retirement, Ms. Ricardo could remember just a few colleagues she worked with in the ‘70s at the Bataan plant who are still living: former National Power Corp. (Napocor) president and health physicist Froilan A. Tampinco, as well as former Napocor executives Antonio Corpuz and Millard S. Villanueva, who is now the mayor of Concepcion town in Iloilo province.
“If President ( Rodrigo R.) Duterte is really firm about going nuclear, as early as now we need to recruit,” Ms. Ricardo said.
Local training won’t suffice, with the country’s top universities yet to offer specialized courses in nuclear physics even as they said their curriculum could be tweaked when there’s a demand.
Ms. Ricardo herself was sent to London midway through the Bataan project and had to study applied physics, while her colleagues were sent to the United States by Westinghouse to train and “secure a license before they can operate” on-site.
Investment in human resources for a nuclear program is bigger than that for conventional power facilities, and nothing short of the “highest level of competence” is required from scientists and engineers who will be hired, the IAEA said.
Apart from universities, potential recruitment sources would be modern fossil fuel-fired plants, research reactor facilities and high- technology industries like pharmaceuticals and aviation, the IAEA said.
How much time the Duterte government has to build the human capacity for a nuclear program will depend on a “national policy,” going by the IAEA’s recommendation.
That national policy will dictate whether the government will nurture homegrown talents or resort to “turnkey” solutions that could be a source of controversy linked to national security given the use of non-citizens.
The Bataan nuclear power plant was built on a turnkey basis under the government’s contract with Westinghouse, and part of that was training Napocor staff abroad.
Hiring foreign professionals or “consultants” will be inevitable, Ms. Ricardo said. And it’s not unlawful. The Philippines last year dropped engineering, chemistry, environmental planning and geology, among others, from its foreign investment “negative list” of sectors and professions reserved for Filipinos. That list can be reviewed every two years under the Foreign Investments Act of 1991 through an executive order, the last one being that of former president Benigno S. C. Aquino III who stepped down on June 30.
“We’ll need to have our young nuclear scientists and engineers trained further if we’ll embark on nuclear power generation soon,” PNRI’s Mr. David said.
“But because we’re not starting from zero,” upgrading the staff ’s skills would take about “three years,” he noted. “We can actually start right away as we have IAEA partner countries willing to help in our training requirements.”
CURRICULUM REVISION
That debate on whether to use local or foreign talent, or both, will have to be settled by a national policy.
Opting for the first would warrant a review of university curricula where nuclear physics is currently offered as a subject and not as something fundamental for a master’s degree. Much of academic focus at least in the past three decades has been on physics as applied to medicine and agriculture, not on its use in operating a nuclear power plant.
At the De La Salle University’s ( DLSU) Physics Department in Manila, half of the 15 professors with Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree took their doctorate abroad.
“We can have that (specialization in nuclear physics) probably in the future when there’s a need,” DLSU Physics Department ViceChairman Christopher T. Que said in a Nov. 16 phone interview.
The problem: without job prospects at home, it will be hard to find takers.
“It’s not about neglecting the course, but because people taking the nuclear physics course will have to go abroad to use that knowledge,” said Mr. Que, who took his PhD in Engineering from Osaka University in Japan.
“We actually have a pool of great skills and talent. It’s just that we have the brain drain.”
DLSU produced an annual average of about 40 Bachelor of Science ( BS) in Physics graduates in the past five years and just a 10th of them pursue a master’s degree, Mr. Que said, adding that the course gets about 150 new enrollees every year.
The UP National Institute of Physics, which claims to have produced the “most number of PhD and MS in Physics graduates in the country,” saw 479 graduates of BS Physics and Applied Physics (Materials and Instrumentation Physics) from 1999-2015. From 2000 to 2015, it produced 226 with master’s degree and 60 with PhD. The institute accommodates 4,000 students per semester, including non-science majors, in its fundamental physics courses.
The institute said its master’s and PhD degrees require thesis and dissertation research in nuclear physics abroad for those wanting to be nuclear physicists.
“The National Institute of Physics does not have the personnel to training and do R&D in nuclear physics,” Physics Professor Wilson O. Garcia, who is also the deputy director for research and extension at the institute, said in an e-mail.
Asked how UP can help build human capacity for a Philippine nuclear program, Mr. Garcia replied: “We have agreed to prioritize the hiring of nuclear physicists ( PhD with post- doctorate training).”