Bataan no longer suitable for nuclear plant

BALANGA CITY: Bataan is no longer suited for a nuclear power plant.

Gov. Jose Enrique Garcia 3rd said this on Monday, more than 40 years after the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) was constructed in Morong town.

The governor welcomed the move of the national government to study all options on the possible reopening of the BNPP. However, he said there have been many changes in Bataan in the last 40 years and the province may not be suitable for a nuclear plant.

The construction in Napot Point of the 620-megawatt BNPP started in 1976 during the administration of former president Ferdinand E. Marcos and mothballed in 1986 when former president Corazon Aquino assumed power.

“Critical industries and facilities have been built in Bataan in the past 40 years, that is why there is a need to study and assess the situation. First of all, can the 40-yearold plant still run and sustain its operation?,” the governor said.

“Secondly, is Bataan a suitable place for a nuclear power plant considering the presence of critical facilities in the province like coal power plants, Bataan oil refinery, economic zones and government arsenal.”

He said that congress and the national government should continue looking for options that will benefit the country.

Garcia explained that if problems arise in the operation of the BNPP, it will result in the shutting down of all critical and private facilities in Bataan, and these will greatly affect the country.

What he sees as an alternative to the BNPP is its conversion into a cloud computing data center facility.

“The data centers consume a lot of energy and the servers produce so much heat. That is why we are looking at the technology for water-cooled data centers, which is interesting because it was invented by a Filipino in Silicon Valley,” Garcia said.

He said that the BNPP as a cloud facility center may become one of the biggest data centers, the most efficient and with less energy consumption.