Claim: President Marcos almost brought the country to energy independence. Except it was a hoax.
Rating: TRUE
Facts: When he was senator, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. filed on November 15, 2010 Senate Bill 2593 or “An Act Creating a Hydrogen Research and Development Center and Providing Funds Therefor, And Other Purposes.”
In his explanatory note for the bill, then Sen. Marcos said that the Philippines should concentrate towards the development and utilization of alternative fuel energy sources which have been found to be abundant in the country.
But instead of wind, Marcos was batting for deuterium. Deuterium is the key ingredient in the production of fusion energy which would provide safe, clean, and almost limitless power.
“Hydrogen is being processed from deuterium which is heavy water or hydrogen water without oxygen,” Marcos said in his explanatory note.
“This is obtained from the deep trenches of the world and the world’s largest deposit of deuterium is in the Philippines,” he added.
Except there are more left unsaid about deuterium.
The Third World Studies Center based in the University of the Philippines used a 2013 Manila Times article to debunk Philippines as the deuterium paradise.
In this article, Ben D. Kritz showed not only BBM’s ignorance on fusion energy but the deep ties of BBM and Imelda Marcos.
It said that the whole deuterium fantasy started from Imelda (Businessweek’s October 24 2013 article, Imelda has an $829 Billion Idea).
The article said that the deuterium fantasy started in the late 1980s when a Filipino said that the Philippine Deep held the motherlode of deuterium.
As it turned out, deuterium is very common in the sea and the concentration of it is found in the shallow waters not in the deep trenches.
The much rarer component of fusion energy is the other hydrogen isotope called the tritium which we obviously do not have much.
Hence, nuclear fusion remains a miracle fuel which is still more miracle than science.
Fortunately, SB 2593 was not passed or else we would join in the embarrassment.
Why we fact-checked this: This lie is perpetuated in the Internet including this page which is unabashedly pro-BBM https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064391663426
ADVERTISEMENT
