This time Duterte really has gone nuclear

If there is one enduring symbol of the staggering plunder that marked the Marcos regime, the concrete monstrosity sitting on 389 hectares of coastline in Morong, Bataan, more than qualifies.
The plant was a magnet of corruption and mismanagement from the beginning. When Marcos decided to develop nuclear power in the wake of the 1973 oil shock, two international energy giants came forward with proposals: General Electric with a detailed $700-million project bid, and Westinghouse with a lower bid of $500 million that was curiously short on specifications.
Marcos chose Westinghouse nevertheless. Construction of the plant began in 1976, and by 1984 the project cost had ballooned to 2.3 billion pesos, funded by foreign creditors. After Marcos’ ouster in 1986, President Cory Aquino’s administration decided to scrap the plant based on a host of safety and environmental concerns. The Philippines would spend the next 30 years paying off the debt, representing its biggest international credit obligation for over a generation.
Why did the cost skyrocket by 400 per cent? Primarily because Marcos and his cronies saw in the project another means to enrich themselves. Up to US$80 million was reportedly forked over in kickbacks by Westinghouse; Marcos was said to have received his share through his crony Herminio Disini. According to the New York Times, Disini’s commission was “5 per cent of the value of Westinghouse’s part of the project” and “Marcos was to get 95 per cent of Disini’s fee”. So flush with cash was Disini that he was able to buy a castle for himself in Vienna. In 2012, the Sandiganbayan ordered him to return $50.6 million in commissions he amassed from the project.
Because the plant’s construction was riddled with malfeasance from the start, the end result was as rotten. An inquiry would reveal shoddy construction, built over geologically unstable land and with over 4,000 defects. While its promise of 621 megawatts of electricity would have benefited only about 15 per cent of Luzon’s population then, the risks were outsize: The 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown in the United States and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Russia had shown that even the most technologically advanced countries in the world struggled to contain the potential devastation of nuclear power.
Japan’s Fukushima incident in 2011 underlined the dangers. Japan, an industrial powerhouse, continues to deal with the after-effects of that devastation – a 30-kilometre exclusion zone, for one, that has turned once-thriving communities into a deserted no-man’s land. According to a recent report, Fukushima radiation continues to leak into the Pacific Ocean.
What could possess Duterte to consider reviving the Bataan plant, given its sordid history, its plethora of risks and the enormous estimated rehabilitation cost of $1 billion? What studies, if any, were commissioned before the decision to reactivate the plant was made? Or is this another of Duterte’s gut decisions, made without adequate consultation with his cabinet and experts in the field? He has indicated he wants to revive other Marcos-era hallmarks, such as the Philippine Constabulary and even, alarmingly, the suspension of habeas corpus – the right to trial before imprisonment. This nuclear plant built by Marcos would not be out of place in that line-up – but only at the expense, once again, of the Filipino people.