An unused and divisive Philippine nuclear plant awaits its fate

By FRANCESCA REGALADO

Noel Germano leads the way through the dark, airless hallways of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, an isolated compound west of Manila that was meant to be the first source of atomic energy in the Philippines. Instead of the thrum of massive turbines and steam generators, there is eerie silence: The plant has been mothballed for decades.

A yellow radiation protection suit is only for display, unneeded by Germano, who manages the plant, or any of his seven engineers as they go about the Sisyphean task of manually turning thousands of analog dials, switches and gears to prevent decay.

The plant was heralded by President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in the 1970s as a step into a prosperous, modern era for the Philippines. Of its four planned reactors, only one unit was completed, in 1984, and it was never switched on. Decades later, his son — who was elected president in 2022 — has revived the country’s pursuit of atomic energy, and his government is exploring options including potentially reviving the plant in Bataan.

The hulking concrete structure sits on an 800-acre site fenced off from the small seaside town of Morong. The plant’s grounds are still well maintained, but its interior, with the reactor that was designed to produce 621 megawatts, resembles a museum diorama. Bringing it to life is not impossible, but it is a tall and expensive ask, experts say.

The goal is the same now as it was in the ’70s: energy security. Marcos, a dictatorial leader who was in power from 1965 to 1986, wanted to diversify the Philippines’ energy sources to guard against global oil shocks like the one in 1973. His son, Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., has had to deal with similar fallout from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Reviving the Bataan plant might prove a hard sell in a cash-strapped country, especially to the Filipinos who see it as a reminder of the corruption and repression of the Ferdinand Marcos Sr. era. And the threat of nuclear catastrophe feels immediate for many residents of Morong, about a mile up the coast.

The project has never been free of skepticism, facing a number of questions from the beginning: Does the Philippines have enough expertise to run a nuclear power plant safely? Is it wise to build one in a part of the world where earthquakes and tsunamis are a constant threat? Can the country even afford it?

Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s government managed to secure financing for the plant through debt. Hundreds of engineers and technicians were sent abroad for training to build up a workforce capable of running a nuclear facility.

The site, on a peninsula across the bay from Manila, was chosen because there was abundant water to cool the reactor and it was considered high enough to be safe from tsunamis, a constant threat because of frequent earthquakes in the region.

Construction began in 1976, bringing a windfall for the many people in Morong and other nearby towns who were hired to work on the project. They included Valentino Tolosa, who said he could not believe his luck when, at the age of 18, he got a job as a cable puller. It paid about $27 a day, 10 times the allowance he got from his mother, he said.

Three years into the plant’s construction, more than 8,000 miles away in Pennsylvania, a reactor at Three Mile Island suffered a partial meltdown in what remains the worst nuclear energy accident in U.S. history. It turbocharged the antinuclear movement in the Philippines, whose activists came to Morong regularly to campaign against the plant being built nearby.