Gov’t urged to commission new study on BNPP conversion

MANILA, Philippines—National Power Corp. (Napocor) has urged the Aquino administration to commission a new study that will determine the viability of retrofitting the mothballed 620-megawatt Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), if the present leadership intends to explore that option.

Napocor president Froilan A. Tampinco said a fresh study would disprove earlier studies, which claimed that the conversion of the country’s first nuclear facility into gas- or coal-fired facility was technically feasible but not economically viable.

“Let’s invite a new study that will determine if present technologies are now better than what we had before and could thus translate (the BNPP conversion) into a feasible project. I am not discounting that, but if I go by the previous studies, that is really not feasible,” Tampinco said.

Tampinco’s remarks were in reaction to earlier pronouncements made by the government that it intended to bid out the proposed BNPP conversion project.

The government, through the Department of Science and Technology (DoST), has already started a quick evaluation of the facility. The DoST, in particular, was trying to find the best available technology that could be used to convert the idle nuclear facility into a productive plant.

Tampinco said the previous studies stressed that the conversion of BNPP would be much more expensive than building a new facility.

This was because the parts and equipment of the mothballed facility were mostly outdated and its turbine generators have low output efficiencies compared to the newer models. As such, although the plant has been converted to run using another fuel, it could still yield low output efficiencies since the same generators would be used, an Inquirer source said.

It would thus be more practical put up a new power plant using the latest equipment and facilities that could operate at maximum capacities, Tampinco said.

The BNPP was built during the Marcos era by Westinghouse Electric at a cost of $2.2 billion. It was mothballed in 1986 due to safety concerns, even before it could begin operations. The structure is now dilapidated and outdated.

Over the past years, however, a number of foreign companies have expressed interest to rehabilitate the BNPP. Previous estimates put the cost of the rehabilitation at $1 billion.