HE said — SHE said

You may have watched too much of The Simpsons if you still think of radioactive waste as an ominous green sludge-like liquid, often sealed in leaking drums and waiting to slip past Charles Montgomery Burns’ feet like his entire wealth did in the show.

“Adopting nuclear as main energy source to power the country up has met opposition from not a few.

Nuclear waste comes out in the form of a piece of metal, not the humming and throbbing liquid that seemed to breathe danger and death as well as money for Monty Burns.

Recent Daily Tribune guest Michael Shellenberger, an environmental activist, made clear that this is not mere misconception but clearly ignorance that drives people away from supporting nuclear energy to power the world.

Shellenberger says going nuclear’s “the best environmental. It’s the best for the environment because you can store it, make sure it doesn’t go into the atmosphere as air pollution or as water pollution. It gives you a chance to both lift everybody out of poverty and protect the natural environment.”

Adopting nuclear as main energy source to power the country up has met opposition from not a few.

Its safety was raised but the country’s first nuclear power plant built in Bataan in the 1980s was not closed due to safety issues. It was mothballed because it was a trophy symbol of Ferdinand Marcos’ waste and corruption.

Cory Aquino did not want anything which could have showed any Marcos success. But she still paid for the loans Marcos secured to build that nuclear power plant. That’s the bigger waste.

But even as efforts to go nuclear is fast gaining ground in the country, the Bataan nuclear power plant could no longer be revived. Not because it is unsafe but because it would cost more to make it breathe than build a new, modern and safer one.

While we have read and heard about news of nuclear fallout, with Chernobyl and Fukushima fresh in our minds, it is most likely we never did further research as information was limited to whatever the West had wanted us to consume before the Internet about Chernobyl in 1986, while Fukushima somehow opened our eyes to a better understanding of what happens during a nuclear fallout.

But still, majority among us may still believe what they probably saw in The Simpsons.

Take the case of Shunichi Yamashita, considered a pariah in Japan for telling those evacuated after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident that the hazards are much less than they suppose.

Yamashita made a case with his mother who was 16 and two miles away from the “Fat Man” when it was dropped by an American fighter plane in Nagasaki in 1945.

It was the third nuclear explosion in history. Yamashita was born to that girl seven years later in 1952, also in Nagasaki which was obliterated from the map and had led Japan to surrender its dream of Asian domination. She still lives with Yamashita at 88.

Naoto Matsumura, 55, a former construction worker, had volunteered to live by his lonesome in Fukushima’s 12.5-mile exclusion zone. Its residents left after they were told to evacuate, leaving behind an entire town the way neighborhoods act — tea cups still on smalls plates, pairs of slippers on the doors, clothes hanging on the line.

Matsumura still sees them as they were left by the Fukushima residents. He stayed because somebody has to take care of the pets left by their masters.

He calls his exposure to radiation “at rock and roll levels.” But claims he will survive for as long as the pets needed care. He is a hero in Japan for being the “guardian of Fukushima’s animals.”

Former Rep. Mark Cojuangco, who brought Shellenberger here says: “There’s only one place in the world where people died and that’s in Chernobyl. But I want to exclude Chernobyl from the consideration of the death, because Chernobyl had no containment and that is forbidden in the West.”

“The only nuclear plants in the world that were built without containment were built by the (former) Soviet Union. And those that were the RBM case that is in Chernobyl. That is forbidden in the West and all nuclear plants in the West have containment. That’s why when we had the triple meltdown in Fukushima — three at the same time — the amount of radiation that escaped was not even enough to increase the radiation to be above that of Seattle or Denver. And that’s the worse that has happened, not a single person died, not a single person was injured by radiation, same with TMI.”

“If I exclude Fukushima,” Cojuangco continued, “zero people have died from nuclear in the entire 60-plus-year’s history of nuclear power. Now tell me, what industry can boast that kind of safety? There’s none. That’s the safest ever and you cannot get better than zero.”

Shellenberger also raised economy as a primary factor in considering the use of nuclear power. It is, he said, cheaper and cleaner than coal which the Philippines use today.

“You’re killing yourself by burning coal and wood and smoke. So, how many people have died in the Philippines because of these superstitious fears of nuclear power? The Philippines does not have its own energy, so you have to pay billions of dollars a year to foreign countries — including the United States, Australia, Indonesia — to import energy. Electricity prices in the Philippines are three times higher than the cost of electricity in South Korea. With nuclear power, you still have to import the fuel, but the fuel is just 20 percent of the cost of nuclear energy as opposed to 70 to 80 percent on natural gas, coal. If you want to grow as an economy, the per capita income in the Philippines is like $3,000 a year; in Korea, it’s more like 30,000, ten times higher,” he said.

Shellenberger and Cojuangco have opened up another debate about nuclear energy. But this time, talks will be different from the issues that wrapped the controversial Bataan plant.

With those scenes from The Simpsons debunked.

If one can get past the paranoia that surrounds the word “nuclear,” then one may argue the timely question: should the country revisit the use of nuclear energy?

Nuclear energy is currently a hot topic nowadays because of how the Department of Energy has been doggedly pursuing alternative power sources — and this is one of them.

“The fear of radiation exposure lies at the core of the resistance against nuclear energy.

First, to get the fear out of the way, nuclear energy is considered to be quite safe.

“MIT found that air pollution from burning fossil fuels kills 200,000 Americans every year and calculated, in terms of deaths per terawatt-hours of electricity generated, nuclear is the safest form of energy that comes from industrial plants,” goes a recent article, “Nuclear energy might be the answer to climate challenges” in a US publication.

This is also the core of the message of a visiting environmentalist from the United States, who spoke about it in detail at last week’s “Straight Talk with Daily Tribune,” along with fellow guest, former Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco who was instrumental in bringing Michael Shellenberger here.

Cojuangco believes nuclear energy is the answer to our energy woes. He has been staunchly working toward the revival of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), largely considered a costly mistake that can possibly now help power up our country anew.

According to Cojuangco, the BNPP can generate electricity at a fraction of the cost that Meralco charges. He answers the doubts that surround the possible operation of the plant, such as the safety of the use of nuclear energy, the plant’s location near an active volcano and the anomalies that surrounded its investment.

What government has been focusing on, meanwhile, is how to meet the rising demand for power, which is expected to increase further this year. Many of the country’s power plants are coal-fired and in need of maintenance.

Using nuclear energy, according to Shellenberger, would generate cheaper electricity while also protecting the natural environment.

Shellenberger, who is the founder and president of Environmental Progress and a Time magazine “Hero of the Environment” award-winning author, has been doing the rounds of Philippine government officials and media outlets to spread the word on “why we need nuclear energy.”

He said, “Nuclear energy is the safest way to make electricity. It produces no deadly smoke.

While people were scared of Fukushima and other accidents, the only harm was from panic, not radiation, which proves that our fears of nuclear are more dangerous than the technology.”

Indeed, the same US newspaper article acknowledges, “Nuclear proliferation, historical mishandling of nuclear waste and nuclear reactor meltdown events, such as Chernobyl and Fukushima, have all been responsible for anti-nuclear energy sentiment among environmentalist groups. The cold war period of America soured many activists to the idea of nuclear science since any scientific development in the field was deemed as enabling the development of potential nuclear armaments. Environmentalists fear that nuclear materials or waste could be stolen (by terrorists) or mishandled, which could create ecological disasters — although these events are incredibly rare and occurred decades ago.”

Another publication supports this idea: “American University professor Joshua Goldstein, the co-author of ‘A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow,’ acknowledged the positive and negative aspects of different energy sources — like the harmful health implications of coal — but concluded that nuclear power is the safest power source.”

Basically, the fear of radiation exposure lies at the core of the resistance against nuclear energy. Perhaps a clear and simple, thorough and credible explanation of the pros and cons of using such energy is what’s needed so the country can move forward in its power goals.

Based on what experts have said so far, the Philippines stands to gain something from exploring the possibility of using a resource that had long been left idle due to politics.

Beyond the allegations of overprice, government should examine the viability of using the nuclear power facility to help bring current power rates down, as well as save on the importation of expensive energy sources such as coal, oil and natural gas, even as it ensures that the unused plant is not defective (another allegation) and truly in a safe zone.

A “good energy mix,” as Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi calls it, is perhaps what we need, after all.