PNRI pitches disposing nuclear waste on Pag-asa Island

Would foreign claimants to Pag-asa Island remain keen if the area becomes the dumping ground of nuclear wastes?

Carlo Arcilla, director of the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute (PNRI) raised this question amid talks of rehabilitating the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant as part of the country's energy source.

“Ang Pag-asa Island kasi di ba inaangkin nung isang bansa d'yan? Eh kung lagyan mo ng nuclear waste, angkinin pa kaya nila?” Arcilla said in Jonathan Andal’s report on “24 Oras."

(Pag-Asa Island is being claimed by a country, right? If you put nuclear waste there, would it still be interested in the area?)

The PNRI official said such a move would keep countries staking claims in the highly-contested territory at bay.

Pag-asa Island is the largest and the only civilian inhabited island in the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) in the West Philippine Sea.

South Korean Ambassador Kim Inchul, during a courtesy visit to President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. on May 23, expressed his country’s willingness to help the Philippines restore the decades-old nuclear plant in Bataan province. The project may last up to five years and may cost up to P52.9-billion ($100B).

Arcilla assured the safety of residents in the country’s territorial waters would remain the government’s priority should the project push through.

He explained the government would need to dig into Pag-Asa Island and seal it with bentonite clay to prevent the radioactive materials from the affecting residents.

“Pag may bentonite ka na, hindi makakarating sa surface ang tinatawag na uranium parang walang nangyari...parang wala yun doon. Safe po yun,” he said.

(The radioactive materials will not reach the surface if we put bentonite clay. It is safe.)

Meanwhile, the Department of Environment (DENR) and Department of Energy (DoE) were split on the PNRI’s proposal.

DENR agreed to the idea saying it has been discussed during a meeting of the committee on nuclear fuel cycle and radioactive waste management.

But the DoE aired its doubts stressing it would not be easy to implement the project. Apart from the complaints of residents on the island, it would also be costly for the administration to establish a deep geological disposal facility given there is only one power plant in the Philippines.

“That option now of placing it in a deep geological area is, at this point, very expensive, so an investor… will not initially make that proposal because it will be an added investment,” Energy Undersecretary Geradro Erguiza Jr. explained.—Sundy Locus/LDF, GMA News