“MONSTER” IN THEIR CENTER Activists call the Bataan nuclear power plant the “Monster of Morong”. The facility in Morong, Bataan Province, was reportedly built with onerous credit
Design, secrecy, corruption and human rights violations during the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. —LYN RILLON
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Philippines – “This is the balance sheet of our resistance”, says Professor Roland Simbulan about the new book he edited “Nuclear-Free Nation (The Power of the People vs. Nuclear Power in the Philippines). ”
The book project started a decade ago, but copies didn’t come out until this month. “It took time to take a step back, to summarize and evaluate our victories and shortcomings for the current and future generations,” Simbulan told the Inquirer.
The 264-page book gives first-hand accounts of what he described as a “successful and historic struggle,” as in addition to editing the book, Simbulan was chairman of the Nuclear-Free Philippines Coalition seven years after it was founded on January 26, 1981 ( NFPC).
The book is dedicated to the NFPC founding chairman, the late former Sen. Lorenzo Tañada, founding secretary general Rev. Jose Cunanan (who died on October 12 at the age of 81), and many others, including martyrs such as the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP ). Worker Ernesto Nazareno, who disappeared in 1978.
NUCLEAR-FREE NATION by Prof. Roland Simbulan
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“How Filipinos stopped BNPP and nuclear power in the country is a great story,” Simbulan, 67, wrote in the introduction. “We owe it to future generations for whom this book was written. It is an obligation to promote a nuclear-weapon-free homeland for the survival of human life. “
The claim made in this narrative read: “The grassroots anti-nuclear movement in the Philippines – even under the most repressive conditions of war rule in the 1970s and 1980s and to this day – has ensured that not a single nuclear power plant is put into operation in the Philippines archipelago.”
The late Kaka Calimbas added that Morong farmers and workers in what was then the Bataan Export Processing Zone in the nearby town of Mariveles were the first to fight the BNPP.
Beginnings
Cathy Alcantara, a victim of extrajudicial killings when Major General Jovito Palparan was in command of the military in central Luzon in 2005, said before her death that “no person in the Bataan communities has been left uninformed on the matter.”
The anti-nuclear movement began as the desk of the Citizens’ Alliance for Consumer Protection, based at St. Scholastica’s College in Manila, which transformed into a coalition of 129 organizations in 1981.
So the Benedictine nun Sister Aida Velasquez, a chemist, was attracted to the later NFPC.
Scientific information was found to be important to leading figures, noted U.S.-based Filipino chemist Dr. Jorge Emmanuel.
“In November 1976 Westinghouse applied for an export license from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A few months earlier, with the help of a local Methodist pastor and Sister Aida, residents of Morong, Bataan, tried to find out about the nuclear power plant project. The military responded to them with threats. Failing to obtain information, Sister Aida and others turned to technical specialists and Filipino support groups in the United States, ”wrote Emmanuel.
Monsignor Antonio Dumaual, the pastor of Morong at the time, said they were fighting the BNPP “not with mere abstractions”.
During the campaign, they asked questions about corruption, choice of location, old design, faulty construction and the safety of people and the environment.
According to bank documents, the BNPP became the “largest fraudulent loan and project” by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ government, as costs reached $ 2.3 billion by its December 1984 completion, or four times the original offer of 500 Million dollars.
In addition to promoting the subjects in a variety of ways, NFPC used songs, poems, and theatrical productions to bring the messages home. They also fought against the BNPP up to the Supreme Court.
The BNPP, completed in 1984, was scheduled to operate with the loading of the uranium fuel, but the NFPC stopped this at the “point in time” by the Welgang Bayan (people’s strike) from June 18-20, 1985. Veterans of this protest said the transport was paralyzed, many shops closed, work stopped and sympathizers from Metro Manila and the surrounding provinces have joined the people of Bataan to express a united voice against the BNPP despite threats from the military.
1985 Welgang Bayan
Photo by Luis Liwanag, Photobank Philippines
Lawyer Dante Ilaya, chairman of the nuclear-free Bataan movement, stated that the strike proved to be the prelude to the popular power revolt against Edsa, which Marcos ousted in February 1986.
“So if we look at the Bayan Welgang, it was a concrete manifestation of popular power,” he said.
His group was organized in Barangay, with residents believing that the BNPP would “endanger their livelihoods, families and communities.”
Simbulan said: “The idea was to create a constituency that would say no to the government, which insisted on adopting the nuclear option as a solution to its energy problem and combining that with the risks associated with the storage and transit of nuclear weapons in the US military bases are connected. ”
Filipinos abroad and foreigners joined the cause, increasing international pressure on Marcos.
The National Union of Scientists has identified more than 4,000 technical defects. This and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster played a role in the decision of then-President Corazon Aquino to mothball the BNPP and then-President Fidel Ramos to uphold the Aquino decision in 1993.
Shortly after proposals to revive the BNPP were made, nuclear disasters occurred, most recently in Fukushima, Japan in 2011.
“Let’s also say we had ‘divine help’. When they started building the BNPP, the Three Mile Island was [in Pennsylvania, United States] Disaster happens. Then, at the height of the fight against nuclear weapons in 1986, Chernobyl [in Ukraine] explodes. Now if [former Pangasinan] Congressman Mark Cojuangco came by and wanted to put the mothballed nuclear power plant back into operation. The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster occurred. So, like I said, someone is leading us up there, ”said Dumaual.
Prof Roland Simbulan
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US campaign
For Emmanuel, the campaign by US-based Filipinos and their allies such as the Friends of the Filipino People in Philadelphia helped “expose the level of technical ruthlessness, increase global awareness of the infamous plant, and demonstrate the value of international solidarity “.
They also helped the lobby turn down the BNPP loans, which paid $ 355,000 a day in interest.
Emmanuel still has unanswered questions: “When I look back on the BNPP case, I am shocked at how far the nuclear madness has gone, like a disease that could have been stopped earlier but was allowed to persist until it got out of hand . How could officials fail to see the shortcomings of the facility and its placement even after the evidence was brought to light? Why did government officials responsible for safeguarding the interests of the people keep having the land fleeced? How could they agree to financial agreements that were so onerous for the Filipino people? Why have decision-makers turned a blind eye to bribery, corruption and human rights violations? “
NFPC activists helped through a provision in the 1987 constitution to ban nuclear weapons in any part of Philippine territory. This ban was made one of the foundations for the closure of US military camps in the Philippines in 1991.
There is a chapter on the views of two BNPP leaders, but theirs is sorry.
Mauro Marcelo, National Power Corp. (NPC) and BNPP Quality Assurance Engineer: “I still believe nuclear power is feasible for the Philippines. We had passed the most difficult phase of the program and our economy could have been like South Korea now if we could have run the BNPP in 1986. South Korea and the Philippines entered the nuclear program almost simultaneously, but we stopped in 1986 while South Korea carried on. ”
Carmelito Tatlonghari, NPC / BNPP Superintendent of Radiation Control, said, “When the BNPP was mothballed in 1986, the operations staff felt like the broken wreckage of mankind as they spent the best of their life relying on the BNPP’s operations. And now they’re too young to retire and too old to get a new job. Your career paths have gone astray. “
But Simbulan warned: “Even after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the nuclear industry in Asia has not given up on its plans. This is true even after the latest authoritative sources have proven that solar power is the cheapest form of energy now and in the future … Here in the Philippines, the Department of Energy and the Department of Science and Technology have not given up. plans to use nuclear energy as a long-term energy option. They believe that the BNPP project in the Philippines only failed because there was a ‘communication problem’ or that there was a lack of ‘publicity campaign’. “
(Editor’s note: “Nuclear-Free Nation” is available from Popular Bookstore, PGX Fair Trade Market, Central Books Supply and Solidaridad Bookshop)
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