Visit to Bataan NPP, 2013-09

Figue 1. Bataan Plant. Is there a prettier location for a power plant?

Mark Cojuangco and others are attempting to resurrect the Bataan nuclear plant which was about to start up when Marcos was overthrown in 1986. The Phils threw the baby out with the bath. In 2013, I had a chance to visit the plant. Mark, for what is worth, here's my trip report verbatim.

Manila is even a worse hell-hole then I remembered. No infrastructure, perpetual traffic jams, eye-stinging pollution, everything covered with grime. And we were in the high rent district. It is even worse than Calcutta-on-the-Hudson. But the place is booming, skyscraper after skyscraper going up, so close to each other that the construction crews can barely fit their cement skips between the buildings.

Car ride to plant took about 3 hours even with our crazy fast, remarkably smooth driver Noli Garduce. Noli's idea of an appropriate margin between cars is about two inches. Last portion was over the first section of the Bataan Death March which is marked at each kilometer. Near kilometer 0 is a monument to Japanese-Phil friendship. Go figure. The area around the plant is sparsely populated by Phil standards. A few tiny villages. Most of the land is very rugged, steep valleys or ravines. And gorgeous.

The plant is on a 356 hectare site on its own little peninsula. The plant is on a graded flat area 18 m above sea level. It cannot take up more than 10 acres. The cleared graded area is about double the plant space since they were already planning for a second plant. The site includes a small artificial harbor thru which they delivered all the material. There is a wide, cleared, fairly gradual road from the harbor up to the plant which is now partly overgrown. I think the grade is low enough so that transporters and crawler cranes can climb it. But this may require some modification of the transporters. There is also an on-site housing area, poetically called Westnuk Beach. Apparently, you can stay there, has conference facilities.

On arrival had a slide show presentation in bare office building in which only a few rooms were lit. The site selection process took 11 [sic] years. They also identified ten other promising sites around the Philippines. The plant was originally called PNPP1, since Marcos intended to build a bunch more. They claim the Bataan site is away from any major fault line.

The original contract was signed in 1976-02, but they had an IAEA safety (PSAR) review in 1977-07, and a geological review in 1978-05, before they were given a construction permit in 1979-04. So they had already lost 3 years. In 1979-06, construction was stopped because of TMI. Marcos ended up adding another feedwater pump, an extra set of batteries, and an enclosed area in the control room to prevent kibitzers from bothering the operators.

Construction restarted in 1981-01. So they had lost another 2 years. 1984-05 they successfully did hot function tests. In June 1984, the first fuel load arrived, but it was never loaded. In July 1984 another IAEA review, and in 1985 plant licensed. But for some reason not talked about in the slide show nothing much happened after June 1984. In March 1986 Chernobyl and in April 1986 the Flower Revolution. Cory Aquino decided not to start up the plant, after it came out that Marcos's bagman got a 15 million dollar kickback from Westinghouse. (Recently a Phil court determined that the total payoffs were 51 million and change and ruled that Imelda et al has to give it back. Good luck with that.) Lots of missing pieces here. But it appears the plant should have been operating in 1980/1981 but for unexplained reviews, TMI, and Chernobyl.

In 1997 the fuel was sold to Siemens, the main distribution transformer was sold, as were the 10 MW's of emergency diesel generators. The Koreans, who have a sister plant, visited in 2008 and said it would take 4 years and 1 billion US to start the plant up. These numbers seem nonsensical to me. They claimed all the wiring would have to be replaced which seems strange.

Our tour guide was Reynaldo (Rey) who started out as a 4th Eng on a cargo ship, was selected for the nuclear program 36 years ago, and has been here ever since. He turns the main turbine and some other rotary machines but has no budget to do anything else. Security is being maintained by a group of very bored guards. Rey understandably is the most doleful Phil I have ever met, but he brightened up a lot as the tour progressed, and he was able to show off his baby to clearly interested visitors.

All the concrete looked fine. There was no sign of any water in the main containment Nil deterioration there. But the turbine hall roof was leaking badly. No problem for the TG itself which is shrouded, but motors and wires etc on the non-nuclear side below the turbine hall were taking a beating. Emergency generators were gone.

The turbine has a HP section, then steam is split to two very big reheaters on either side of the TG and then into the two LP turbines with their massive condensers. The result is a massive, overwide turbine hall, that is served by a 163/22 ton bridge crane. There is a lot of room at the HP end, maybe enough to put a topping turbine. The steam cycle is cooled with sea water. Rey said the inlet/outlet (notes unclear) is about 1 km offshore.

The nuclear side is cooled by a set of squat little towers, maybe 10 m high at most. Much like larger versions of what you see on top of buildings. The towers could handle decay heat for a nearly infinite length of time as long as the plant has EDG or other power. This design isolates decay heat cooling from the main seawater system, avoiding the Fukushima scenario if the seawater pumps are lost.

The containment consists of a 1 m thick concrete wall then an 8 inch gap and a 1.5in? carbon steel wall. You enter the containment thru a concrete maze and then an air-lock about 5 ft in diameter. The personnel air lock and a 2 foot diameter hole to the spent fuel pool are the only openings in the containment. There's no easy way to replace the major pressure vessels. Talk about dumb.

The control room is completely analog with massive mimic boards. Rey said the Koreans said it was outdated and would all have to be replaced. Again nonsense. This system is not prey to software glitches or viruses, and a lot less prone to operator errors then a keyboard. I'd keep all this good, if expensive, system, just add a digital monitoring layer, and maybe a couple of big screen displays of time series.

The plant was not properly laid up. The containment and control room at a minimum should be DHed. As should the steam loop. Dont know what they did with the condensers. And the dripping water is doing a lot of damage to the non-nuclear auxiliaries.

Next day had lunch with James Go and Bert Lozada. Jim Go is a fraternity brother and head of the family that is a food processing giant and large land developer in the Philippines. Lozada, ex-chairman of the Phil Mech Engineers Society does Jim's power plants among other things. (Any major industrial plant has to provide its own power. Lozada said it costs about $600/kW to build a 10 to 20 MW diesel plant in the Philippines.) Lozada had been to the Bataan plant, and is a strong supporter of starting it up. Both said there was no chance of this happening as long as Ninoy Aquino, Cory's son, was president. After that, Lozada thought there was a decent chance depending on who was the next president. Jim thinks Bert is being way too optimistic.