Philippines: One Step Closer to Nuclear Power

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is not obliged to examine the safety of a reactor exported from the United States. So said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, in upholding the NRC's decision to allow Westinghouse to export a reactor to the Philippines. The NRC's approval had been challenged in court by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Philippine Movement for Environmental Protection, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and the Center for Development Policy.

Westinghouse is building the reactor to be installed at a site now under construction at Napot Point, Bataan Province, on the island of Luzon. In upholding the export license, Judge Malcolm R. Wilkey stressed he was merely interpreting the law, not endorsing the project: "This reactor will be built and operated by a country almost totally without prior experience with nuclear energy," Wilkey wrote, "and (it) will be sited in the shadow of four volcanoes in a known earthquake zone."

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos approved the reactor plan in June 1974, soon after the OPEC oil embargo and the imposition of martial law in the Philippines. The object was to generate electricity for the island of Luzon. The original plan called for two reactors, and the U.S. State Department exerted pressure in support of Westinghouse's bid, which at that time carried a $250 million price tag for the two reactors. Fourteen months later, that estimate had risen to 51.2 billion for just one reactor.

Much of the financing to date has come from the U.S. Export-Import Bank. In 1976, EXIM authorized 5277.2 million as a loan to the Philippines, and another 5367.2 million in loan guarantees for plant and fuel purchases. In May of this year. EXIM added a further $104 million in guarantees. Currently, the cost estimate for the completed reactor is 51.9 billion, which makes it one of the most expensive of its type anywhere, ever. Critics have described the deal as a bailout of Westinghouse by the EXIM Bank. using- U.S. taxpayers' money.

The petitioners told the Appeals Court that not only was the Westinghouse design untested and the site a potential scene of natural disasters, but also, any meltdown of the completed reactor would endanger both the city of Manila which is 45 miles due west of the site, and the U.S. Naval and Air Force bases at nearby Subic Bay and Clark Field, where 32,000 United States citizens are stationed.

The NRC approved the reactor's export without examining any of these safety aspects because, they said, the law did not specifically require them to when the plant is sited in a foreign country. Both of the two judges who wrote opinions (a third judge withdrew from the opinion without explanation) found this an unsatisfactory situation, but one beyond their jurisdiction.

The Appeals Court decision will be appealed to the full Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. Jacob Scherr, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, argues that provisions of the Atomic Energy Act and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act mandate a health and safety review, regardless of where the reactor is to be built. Scherr also believes that "the export of an unsafe reactor is contrary to the security and foreign policy objectives of the United States. An accident the size of Three Mile Island," says Scherr, "would practically bankrupt the Philippines ... and the fact that we pushed this on them means we would have a moral obligation to clean it up."