PRESS RELEASE

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Business Group Lobbies for Opening the Philippines’ Mothballed Nuclear Plant

Aug. 22, 2016 (EIRNS)—One of the multitude of crimes perpetrated in the past 50 years, to prevent the economic development of so-called "third-world" countries, was the denial of civilian nuclear energy. The Philippines was one of many of the developing nations that started to plan to have nuclear energy, immediately after President Eisenhower’s announcement of Atoms for Peace in the 1950s. The Bataan Nuclear Power plant construction began in 1976, and was nearly complete when President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in 1986. It has been mothballed since—thirty years.

Now, the oldest business group in the Philippines, the Chamber of Commerce, is calling on President Duterte to open the plant, citing the lack of energy needed to support industrialization and economic growth, the press reported on Aug. 21. Considering the other steps Duterte is taking, going head-to-head with the British crown, perhaps there will now be the possibility to bring the Philippines into the nuclear age.