"REACTOR” (revisiting the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant)

[Music] in the Philippines it's really exciting to be here so this is an interesting place because they actually have a nuclear plant that they built and our friend Marc brought us down to give a talk and we're releasing an open letter signed by all these world-famous climate scientist James Hansen Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Rhodes great historians urging the President to take a second look at nuclear and use nuclear as a way to get off of fossil fuels and develop the country in the Philippines just spends a lot more money on electricity than almost every other country even more than Singapore which is already a very wealthy country there's really no debate about this this is a graph showing that the more electricity you use the fewer people live in poverty electricity prices in the Philippines are three times higher than the cost of electricity in South Korea I spent some time in South Korea South Korea's South Korea also doesn't have a ton of energy why does it spend one-third as much on electricity as the Philippines because they have nuclear power so this amount of uranium can provide all the energy for a rich American's life you know for a Filipino that much the Philippines is an Asian country that hasn't yet taken off so it's seen a lot of its neighbors Taiwan South Korea obviously Japan become very rich nations using a lot of nuclear energy and increasing the amount of energy they consume like Indonesia Thailand Malaysia all have a lot of potential to grow but if they're gonna do so in a way that doesn't make their cities even more polluted they're gonna need a lot of nuclear energy the reason that nuclear is the safest is because it doesn't produce air pollution there's nothing that burns it's a way for Philippines to decide to become an advanced country there's a lot of fears that people have but when you look at the science nuclear is the cleanest safest and cheapest way to make electricity nuclear has actually saved 1.8 million lives it's a kind of a shocking finding because if you have a nuclear plant then you don't need to burn coal and if you're not burning coal you're not producing the deadly air pollution onhub copied this morning the Philippine House of Representatives has just passed a bill providing a framework for the use and regulation of nuclear energy this is big for the Philippines since the lobby for this has been going on for years most people don't know anything about nuclear and so they believe all the superstitions and the mythology right which keeps you trapped on in this fossil fuel economy to make a bomb you have to you have to turn the uranium in the reactors to much higher levels of enrichment the uranium in a bomb is enriched to get 95 percent enrichment the fuel and a nuclear plant is enriched to just 5 percent as my friend here in the Philippines says it's like the difference between whiskey and beer what's in a nuclear power plant is more like beer and a nuclear bomb is more like whiskey it's just a much more intense version of that uranium fuel and so we don't allow nuclear power plants to enrich uranium to those high levels anymore also in terms of protecting the natural environment one of the most important things is that nuclear plants require very small amounts of land like a couple of football fields you can produce enough power for 2 million 3 million 4 million people to generate that same amount of energy from solar you have to cover an area over a hundred and twenty five times larger and in the Phillipines land is scarce you don't have a lot of land [Music] it's not illegal to put solar panels on your roofs in the Philippines the first plan to power the world on solar wind and water was written in 1833 if it's so viable if it's so ready to happen how come it's not happening anywhere and in the places that try the hardest why do they spend twice as much for electricity to get less than half as much from clean energy sources [Music] but the great thing about nuclear waste is that there's so little of it and therefore it's easy to store you can see that all of the waste ever produced in the United States over the last sixty years can fit on a single football field stack fifty feet high as an environmentalist nuclear waste is my favorite kind of waste because it never enters the atmosphere as air pollution or it never enters the oceans so it seems like here in the Philippines people are not that surprised when we show them the data that nuclear is really not that scary not that dangerous but what everybody wants to know is how are you gonna convince the other people that's right because there's a lot of we'll just go with the flow yeah yeah I think how are you gonna change everybody's mind right rather than how are we in it yeah I think we need to work on the WTI right well Marcos built highways so don't drive on the highways you know Marco's build hospitals so we don't go to the hospitals it's just a tool nuclear is just a technology like any technology it can be you can use it for good things or bad things so a need to grow up a little bit you know we act like kids oh this technology belongs to those people that's just come on in our country the importance of energy in the economic development is not given the touch we shall be straight right I don't care where I thought for a sauce my power my concern is to provide the power if you can tell me where that is I will cable it you don't want to wait for that time that you will all be crying for power [Music] I feel like Anthony Bourdain there's very good there's gonna be a few in me yeah yeah well talk there are slides I gave it television okay so mayor's not coming yes even to her office yes okay congressman called to me or not there and the Catholic Church has been disseminating not to attend churches people hate them go why don't we go talk to the church let's go talk to the priests let your bicep at five there [Music] hi good morning break this year for 30 okay my father Michael Shallenberger nice to meet you I I want to come and then but I'm only secondary as lean as the parish priests of the town because Geographic please under my protection but it was just a fling okay so a further purpose for me for my Facebook page okay no yeah okay yeah I say I got something to do indeed the issue without the permission of the vision okay so I hope you understand of course it's fine thank you for seeing us thank you yeah yeah three letters in triplicate so no mayor no priests well let's go talk to people yeah let's go talk to people to figure out what's going on Eastbrook why so that there'll be jobs uh-huh [Music] why not do you know did you know that there's a nuclear power plant here what do you think of it is it thumbs up or thumbs down some people say it's dangerous do you think it's dangerous but you still like it if it's so if it's so if it's so dangerous why do you like it if it's if it's in the right place if it's in the right wave using it okay [Music] hi I am Michael nice to meet you hey hey oh you are cool that's my card thanks for coming yeah yeah I will spend some time together good good Michael nice to meet you there are 450 nuclear plants around the world like Bataan my date is from the World Health Organization the united nations and the british medical journal lancet the greenpeace data is from a crazy russian scientist but literally like a sucker like one crazy doctor in ukraine an hour in the plant and then we come back here after the plans for three and then we go home are we gonna manila we're gonna go inside the bowels of the plans [Music] [Music] look at it it's just so scary dudes notice that these are and that's how about what these are Sony really think pumping was earthquake-proof see for yourself these containment leaks all the area is sucked into a filter system before being exhausted into that Monsieur meaning even if there's a leak here nothing gets out so there's a concrete wall there's the steel containment and now here look at this you see this that's I challenge you to find a welding as nice as that anywhere in the Philippines so they're steel and then outside the boundary so this is the big difference between this and Chernobyl Chernobyl had no containment it was a realtor in a warehouse and when it failed if all speak into the environment this keeps it all in so even if we have a meltdown we have containment this is the pressure that you know [Music] as an extra earthquake-proof so it doesn't move even and in and everything but not just if you run without that but practically that submits a nuclear plant expensive one of this extra little things that you won't move a single bit even during the worst way [Music] the control room [Music] please look pristine you know it's custom some paint but otherwise things in great shape fears that are unfounded I think he had them before and his experience showed people here that they're not unique that it's happened to people in other countries and that they've overcome these fears and they've seen the the the rationale behind nuclear and why it's so good for the environment and for the economy once the people the Philippines decide to be you up in Bataan once this up and running I think everybody's nervous will calm down a lot so the big challenging part is right now getting everybody on board the big challenging part is right now getting everybody on board [Music]

Channel: TWIMedia

Views: 269,623

Rating: 4.9113221 out of 5

Keywords: Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, Clean Energy Philippines, Mark Cojuangco, Nuclear Philippines, TWIMedia, The Workshop for Infinite Media

Id: hefGjyfSpVQ

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 04 2019