Yet Another Prologue

This is another prologue of a still untitled sci-fi thriller that's queued in the pipeline right after Wanted: Full-Support Priestess. Setting is modern-day Philippines and the plot is fashioned with a lot of local intricacies, truths, and myths.

I think I'll give this story a title right now.

Altered Amplified Attribution.

Project: AlAmAt

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Prologue: The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant

Perhaps there is no single government expenditure that is more monumentally disastrous and unsually missed by public scrutiny than the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant project.

The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNP) came about from a presidential decree from the then President Ferdinand Marcos to stem the effects of the 1973 oil crisis by reducing dependency on imported oil.

Sited at Morong, Bataan - a comfortable 68 kilometres north of the national capital of Manila, the BNP was targetted to use some 620 megawatts of power using Westinghouse lightwater reactors at the cost of 600 million dollars. The project was completed in 1984, pending only government payment of 2.3 billion dollars (boosted due to controversial allegations of corruption between goverment and westinghouse officials)

Upon inspection of the powerplant by the Aquino Administration replacing the Marcos Administration, the powerplant as deemed too unsafe for operations and was completely abandoned.

Active enriched uranium stored onsite for use was reportedly sold off to bidders from China in a closed-session bid while the lightwater reactor stays unoperated today at the cost of 150,000 dollars worth of interest and system maintenance.

Further attempts to revive the plan to resurrect the plant have all ended in futility as the new Philippine Constitution of 1986 prevents usage of any form of nuclear power in the country.

There have been plans from both the government and interested corporate parties to convert the derelict plant into a fossil-fuel driven plant for the past ten years but as of writing, there has been no such development.

Debt repayment and maintenance has been the country's single biggest obligation ever since, without the plant ever producing a single watt of usuable electricity for its owners.

According to the latest employment manifesto, the plant employs no fewer than twenty employees, with functions ranging from the shifting perimeter guards to site monitoring engineers required by the IAEA. Among these employees are two geneticists whose job description is to "monitor mutation levels" of its employees from within the plant's bowels.

There are no known stockpiles of radioactive materials onsite in the Bataan Nuclear Powerplant.