BY DR. JOEY PALU-AY DACUDAO
FOR THE Philippines, the main advantage is that huge earthquakes do not crack open floating ships, only land-based ones. What about tsunamis? They are an issue only on shores facing the Pacific Ocean. Within the Philippine Archipelago, the islands themselves prevent tsunamis from occurring in the inland seas. Floating nuclear reactors can be easily towed from one shoreline to another, anywhere within the Archipelago. Moreover, unlike in other countries that manufacture nuclear reactors, wherein you have to do contracts with multiple companies and organizations, with Russian nuclear reactors, you only have to deal with one company, Rosatom. Rosatom builds the reactors, provides the technical knowhow and manpower to run and maintain them, supplies the fuel, and manages the nuclear waste.
Because of the political climate in the world at present, the Philippines (as a US ally) will have to deal with American or European or South Korean nuclear companies. (Not Russian or Chinese ones.)
That rules out practically all of the fourth gen nuclear reactors and the floating modular reactor. We are left with land-based water-cooled third gens.
US, France, South Korea, and India do build third gen water-cooled reactors. In my opinion, these will still be vulnerable to mighty earthquakes.
In the US, 20% of electricity is generated by nuclear plants. In France, more than 70% of electricity is generated by nuclear plants. Thus, these two counties have the most experience in building and maintaining them.
Caveat 1: Since the Three-mile nuclear accident in 1979, US has not completed the construction of any new commercial nuclear reactors. However, it is in the process of building at least two. US has also successfully maintained its old reactors.
Caveat 2: Some sectors of the US are promoting ‘advanced modular’ nuclear reactors. They seem to be keen on selling them to third-world countries such as the Philippines. It must be kept in mind that the US has never constructed them yet (except the MSR). Thus, they are mostly only theoretical. Most of these are of the lead-cooled or MSR type.
As mentioned above, there are issues of corrosion and radioactive gases in the decommissioning of the MSR type. Furthermore, the last MSR that US built was in the 1960s. Only China is building one at present.
As for the lead-cooled reactor, only Russia has had extensive experience in building them. Some Russian submarines during the Cold War were powered by lead-bismuth eutectic reactors. At present, Russia is building a purely lead-cooled reactor (no bismuth as it easily transmutes into radioactive polonium). The main issue is that the ideal fuel for the lead-cooled reactor is uranium (or thorium) nitride, one that uses nearly pure nitrogen-15, a rare isotope of nitrogen. (The more common nitrogen-14 is transmuted massively into dangerous radioactive carbon-14 when hit by neutrons in a reactor, while nitrogen-15 is not.) No US company has successfully manufactured nitride nuclear fuel in amounts sufficient for a lead-cooled reactor. Russia though has announced it is already manufacturing uranium nitride fuel for the lead-cooled reactor it is building.
In conclusion, the best we can do as of now is order for third-gen nuclear reactors either from the US or France. Then place them on areas of the Philippines away from the Pacific facing side, and in areas with a scarcity of earthquakes and fault lines. The latter condition may be difficult to comply with as the Philippines is crisscrossed with fault lines. There are places though with a scarcity of earthquakes. These are the places that would be good candidates for placing in land-based nuclear reactors. (For comments and suggestions please email to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)/PN
