Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
'500-Mile Island' (1979)

Auteur	Pacific Reserch
Datum	juni 1979
Classificatie	4.16.0.00/02 (FILIPPIJNEN)
Voorkant

INTRODUCTION

The political and economic fall-out from the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, 
Pennsylvania, has created a political climate in which new U.S. reactor construction 
will be severely curtailed, at least in the short run. But the American nuclear 
industry is far from dead. Nuclear expansion continues in other parts of the 
world, particularly where political opposition is suppressed.
In 1973, the Philippine government decided to build a nuclear reactor on the Bataan 
Peninsula, near the town of Morong. Bataan, scene of the World War II Bataan 
Death March and site of a growing Export Processing Zone, is only sixty miles 
south of Manila on the archipelago's largest island, Luzon. The town of Morong 
and the reactor itself, are located on the edge of Mt. Natib, an active volcano.
During 1976, the year the State of California enacted what amounted to a 
moratorium on new reactor approvals, the U .S. Export-Import Bank authorized 
$644 million in loans and loan guarantees in support of what is now a $1.1 billion 
Philippines project. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, at this point divided 
over many issues of nuclear safety, still has to approve the export of the 600 
megawatt Westinghouse reactor.
The Bataan reactor project is rife with problems and controversy: environmental 
danger, social inequity, corruption, authoritarianism, etc. The first to oppose the 
project were the peasants of Morong, displaced from their homes and farms or 
forced to live in the shadow of the reactor complex. Through their opposition - 
which has faced repression by the Marcos martial law government from the 
start - they have demonstrated that the resistance to nuclear power extends beyond 
the advanced industrial countries to include some of the poorest, semi-literate 
people in the world.
This report demonstrates that the nuclear industry spans many countries and 
operates throughout the globe. In particular, to fuel the Philippine and other 
reactors, the industry will need to mine additional uranium. The most likely sites 
are Native American territories - in the U .S. and Canada – or Aboriginal Australian 
lands. On both continents, mining has aroused local and national opposition because 
uranium mining threatens the health, lands, cultures and even the survival of 
indigenous peoples. Similarly, the disposal or reprocessing of radioactive wastes 
threatens the human and natural environment for centuries, wherever it is located. 
At present the most likely spots for eventual disposal of Philippine spent fuel are on 
a U.S.-controlled Pacific Island or underneath the Pacific Ocean itself.
Opposition to the reactor, therefore, is also international, linking groups and 
individuals concerned about environmental destruction, human rights, and social 
justice in the Philippines, the U .S., Australia, Canada, the Pacific, Japan, and 
elsewhere.
As this report demonstrates, the problems of the Philippine reactor are not unique. 
As such, this may be considered a case study. In Brazil, S. Korea, Indonesia-in fact, 
throughout the Third World- nuclear development serves social orders which are 
politically authoritarian and economically inequitable. These conditions are not 
historical accidents, but part of an international system of neocolonialism, 
dominated by U.S.-based interests. Opposition to nuclear power not only challenges 
the particular technology but threatens the international order which imposes it.

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