MARIT STINUS-CABUGON
THE Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) is the only commercial nuclear energy facility within the Asean region. The 620-megawatt power plant was being readied for operation in 1985. Then the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the former Soviet Union happened. Dozens of responding firemen were the first to die from exposure to radiation but the total death toll and extent of the effects on health and the environment from the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl will never be known. “It is estimated that people will not be able to reside in the area for 24,000 years,” Fox News reported last week.