Nukes, MRT/LRT, Kadhafi

DIE HARD III / Herman Tiu Laurel / October 23, 2013 / Daily Tribune

The mainstream media are still channeling along the anti-pork, anti-opposition and distract-from-BS Aquino failures line. Vital national and global issues are being bypassed. There are other issues that cry for attention: First, BS Aquino's P50 million to restore the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) which will be a waste if the obsolete uranium-reactor mindset persists while the 21st century option of Thorium is swept by the wayside. Secondly, the best priced option for new Metro Rail Transit (MRT) coaches is being threatened by the Aquino-Rychtar cabal while the 21-km Light Rail Transit (LRT)-1 to Cavite is being given exorbitant subsidies for the corporate oligarchy. Thirdly, a day of reckoning for those who condemned and killed Kadhafi is again at hand.

The BNPP revival was basically from a local ideological group with antiquated nuclear ideas and the uranium nuke lobby. Uranium nuke will lead the nation into a second bitter energy debacle. The uranium-nuclear option is a dead option, there will be "a next Fukushima" (est. ten-year clean-up cost: $ 250-billion) sooner or later, as there was Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Uranium-nuclear technology is simply inherently "dirty" and strategically suicidal, its pressurized systems prone of explode, Labyrinthian cooling systems tend to failure, radioactive wastes a threat literally forever and permanently costs billions to store. Thorium has none of these problems.

This is not to support the anti-nuke position which is anti-Third World and pro-financial "cap-and-trade" energy lobby. Neither is it against renewable energy but we do demand renewables costs to be lowered before they are imposed. Like China and India's nuclear scientists and our own Dr. Roger Posadas, I am advocating the leap-frog into Thorium nuclear energy. As Dr. Posadas explains: the Philippines has known Thorium deposits (such as Palawan monazites), its low risk level require technology within Filipino technological and engineering capabilities (we can do it ourselves), it has no by-product that is easily used in nuclear weapons and minimal wastes.

China and India are going into Thorium in very big ways, the former devoting $350 million into its development and the latter is already running a experimental thorium reactor (watch my show Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m. on Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8 and SkyCable channel 213, or www.gnntv-asia.com with Dr. Roger Posadas, with video of India Thorium operation).

Last June, 2013 Norway successfully converted a uranium-power plant to use thorium. Chile and Indonesia are also in the process of converting their uranium-fuel plants to test Thorium. The Philippines needs a popular Thorium campaign to educate solons and the public on this fuel of today into the future.

On the MRT-3 "capacity expansion project" which is now post-qualifying the winning bid of $1.8 million/coach, the MRT-3 technical team is currently in China evaluating Dalian Locomotive. Since 1954 the company has supplied the world's largest train network, China. The Czech's Inekon wants $3 million/coach and did not join the bidding. Instead, it wants a "government-to-government" deal. The Czech company and embassy are raising a ruckus over alleged "corruption" of MRT-3 executives when it is clear the Czechs have been cultivating its "special relationship" with Aquino related personalities like Psinakis, Aquino-Lichauco, Ballsy Aquino and Eldon Cruz.

On the LRT-1 bidding, the public should read the Department of Transportation and Communications secretary's announcement on the terms it is giving to the corporate oligarchs-bidders: "…the government's absorption of the real property tax; protection of the concessionaire against "radical power rates changes" (why can't residential consumer get same); a "negative bid" or subsidy for the bidders (but they accuse commuters of being pampered with "subsidies"); government will assume the responsibility of rehabilitating LRT-1 in case structural defects arise. If they are getting all these subsidies, guarantees and perks, why doesn't government do the LRT project by itself?

Finally, to the many mainstream media personalities who supported by parroting the US-British-North Atlantic Treaty Organization justification for the "no fly zone" against Gaddafi, the bombing and genocide of his people for "democracy": in this second anniversary of Gaddafi and his family members' murders, let us look at the "democracy" the killers promised. Even British Reuter's had to report Oct. 10 that "Libyan gunmen on the government payroll seized the prime minister in his nightshirt on Thursday and held him for several hours, in a new manifestation of the anarchy that has followed the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi." Libya's oil cannot be exported with anarchy reining supreme.

If lashes could be given for every failed opinion of the "human rights" chatterboxes who supported Western interventions in Third World countries, those self-righteous do-gooders should be bleeding to death by now.

(Tune to 1098AM, 5 to 6 p.m., Tues. to Fri.; "The Thorium Future" on Destiny Cable, GNN Channel 8, Skycable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday 8 p.m. and Sunday 8 a.m.; visit: http//www.newkatipunero.blogspot.com; text comments to 0923-4095739)