CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga ? (UPDATE) The provincial board of Bataan has passed a resolution opposing House Bill 4631 sponsored by Pangasinan Rep. Mark Cojuangco to revive the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant in Morong, Bataan.

Board Member Rod Izon, one of the resolution?s two authors, said the board, in passing the resolution on Monday, called for a "total junking" of the bill on account of safety and public expense.

Izon said he and Board Member Orlando Miranda sponsored the resolution to support the request of Gov. Enrique Garcia to the board to help protect the lives of Bataan residents and their environment.

Vice Gov. Serafin Roman, the board's presiding officer, said the resolution passed on 6-3 voting during the regular session.

Izon said the board debated on the possible alternative uses of the facility.

"But we agreed not to allow the use of nuclear [energy]. We agreed to be open to the other uses of the BNPP," he said in a telephone interview on Monday.

This was the first time that the board made known its stance on the BNPP revival plan.

In the Feb. 23 protest rally organized by Balanga Bishop Socrates Villegas, Garcia spoke to say that taxpayers had borne the financial burdens of the BNPP, referring to the $2.3 billion spent to build it and the $9.5 million spent on a study commissioned to determine its safety.

These amounts and the $1 billion Cojuangco sought for rehabilitating the BNPP could have built classrooms, hospitals and houses for poor families, Garcia said.

The BNPP, expected to supply 619 megawatts of electricity to the Luzon grid, never produced a single watt.

?I am willing to withdraw my proposal if it could be proven that it would be hopeless to rehabilitate and safely operate the plant,? Cojuangco told Reuters, adding the country desperately needs additional power.

Built during the administration of strongman Ferdinand Marcos, the BNPP was mothballed in 1986 by the administration of former President Corazon Aquino following safety and corruption issues.

Cojuangco is a son of prominent Marcos ally Eduardo ?Danding? Cojuangco.

Hundreds of activists have been holding almost daily protests outside the House of Representatives as lawmakers deliberate on funding Cojuangco?s proposal.

Groups from environmentalists to the Catholic Church argue the plant is unsafe and will cost too much to rehabilitate and run.

Critics also say reviving the plant could end up being advantageous to the Cojuangco family because of the clan?s interest in the power sector.

Marcos ordered the Bataan nuclear plant built in 1976 in response to an energy crisis. Construction was completed in 1984 but the facility never produced a single watt of electricity after it was declared unsafe and inoperable because it sits on a major earthquake fault line and lies near the Pinatubo volcano, which was dormant at the time.

Pinatubo erupted in 1991, but there was no effect on the Bataan plant, 70 kilometers away.

?I just need to convince my colleagues to fund this project,? Cojuangco said, adding he was sure of securing 196 votes from the 238-member lower chamber.

Learning of the board's action, Villegas said: "The provincial government officials are listening to the people who elected them. We are proud of you."

Bataan Rep. Herminia Roman, one of the co-sponsors of Cojuangco?s bill, did not reply when sought for reaction.

The resolution came after the House committee on energy, in a hearing on Feb. 25, agreed to subject the BNPP revival plan to a study.

Cojuangco has opposed this, saying this was a form of "procrastination." He moved for the operations of the BNPP to prepare for the energy crisis in 2012.

Dr. Kelvin Rodolfo, a geologist, warned against the operations of the BNPP, saying the facility was built on a potentially active volcano, Mt. Natib, and several active fault lines near it.

Dr. Nicanor Perlas, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Philippine Nuclear Power Plant during Aquino's term, said the study completed by the National Union of Scientists Corp. in 1989 showed the BNPP with 40,000 defects.

The 28-volume study has not been released by the Office of the President and both houses of Congress, despite request by the environmental coalition Green Convergence in mid-February, Perlas said.

That report, he said, contained all the evidence that operating the BNPP would not be safe.

"That bill (Cojuangco's bill) has no study. In contrast, the government is really sitting on a very expensive study done by? proponents of nuclear power because many of the people in the panel were regulators of nuclear power plants. They were not anti-nuclear activists," he said.

Perlas said there was no legal impediment to release the report because the Philippine case against Westinghouse Electric Co. was long over.

The government sued for overpricing and bribery. It lost the suit in a United States court in 1993.

"The prescriptive period [of seven to 15 years for confidentiality] is over. There's no reason for government to keep the document," Perlas said.