Together with their two children, Ruel Concepcion and his wife, Emily Fajardo, live a technologically modest life, owning a few electric fans, a rice cooker, and other basics. Yet their monthly electricity bill can consume up to 58% of the money Mr. Concepcion makes driving people around Mariveles, a tourist town at the tip of the Philippines’ mountainous Bataan Peninsula.
Filipino families face some of the highest electricity rates in Asia, and like many breadwinners, Mr. Concepcion is struggling to make ends meet, especially as the Iran war drives up costs of food, fuel, and other essentials.
One potential solution to the country’s energy woes sits a short drive north of here: the long-shuttered Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP).
Why We Wrote This
Earlier this week, we covered Uruguay’s renewable energy transition. As the Iran war raises energy prices, the Philippines weighs the costs of nuclear against the costs of staying its current course. What does a “peaceful, safe, and secure” approach to nuclear power look like?
Built in response to the 1973 oil crisis, the plant was beset by corruption and safety issues from the start. The government officially closed BNPP’s doors shortly after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, and has never commissioned another plant since.
But in recent decades, Manila has sought to reincorporate nuclear power into its energy portfolio to lower electricity prices, reduce the country’s reliance on imported coal and oil, and meet clean energy goals. It’s even in talks with a Korean company about the feasibility of reopening the BNPP. The public is warming up to nuclear, too – after decades of staunch opposition, a 2024 survey commissioned by the Energy Department found that more than 70% of Filipinos trust nuclear power as a reliable source of electricity, and many support rehabilitating the BNPP.
Given their monthly expenses, one might expect the Concepcion family to be among that majority. Instead, they join environmental activists and church leaders pressing the country to reconsider its return to nuclear power, especially if it means sidelining other forms of renewable energy or jeopardizing public safety in an archipelago vulnerable to earthquakes and typhoons.
“What are the social costs, what are the environmental costs, economic costs?” says Aaron Pedrosa, head of the legal team of the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice. “If we want to learn the lessons of the other countries, we must also contextualize it by looking at our own experience, our own vulnerabilities.”
Geopolitical tensions and energy security
The Philippines has the third-most expensive residential electricity rates in Asia – and ranks 48th globally, according to 2023-2025 data released by GlobalPetrolPrices.com, a trusted international research firm. It follows Singapore and Japan.
That’s partly due to energy privatization and the logistical challenges of transferring energy from one island to another. But like many island nations, the Philippines is also heavily reliant on imported fossil fuels, with coal accounting for nearly 60% of its power generation and about 90% of the coal coming from Indonesia. “The Philippines suffers because it is a fossil-fuel poor country,” says Mark Cojuangco, a member of Congress and a staunch advocate of nuclear energy. “It’s not acceptable to be that dependent. Nuclear relief fits a strategic solution.”
That’s why he spearheaded the Philippine National Nuclear Energy Safety Act, which President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed into law late last year. The act paves the way for creating an independent regulatory body to ensure the country’s compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency standards and “facilitate the peaceful, safe, and secure uses of nuclear energy.” Proponents hope the move – also known as the PhilAtom Law – will boost public trust and grease the wheels of foreign investment.
Mr. Cojuangco has advocated for reopening the BNPP, and has proposed other areas where authorities could green light the construction of a new plant, including in his own province of Pangasinan. Whatever route the Philippines chooses, officials say it will take more than a decade to bring a nuclear power plant online.
Still, lawmakers believe embracing nuclear energy is essential to unshackle the Philippines from volatile global energy markets. Representative Cojuangco remembers how the Philippines government scrambled to send delegates to Indonesia in 2022 when Jakarta temporarily suspended all coal exports to secure its domestic supply. He also worries about standoffs between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, which threaten the safe transport of essential fuel supplies through disputed waters. A blockade by Beijing would result in an “automatic brownout,” he says. “The defense burden on our navy is huge.”
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has offered a preview of what such a blockade could look like, raising fuel costs to the point that the president declared a national energy emergency – and once again exposing the Philippines’ vulnerability.
To be sure, nuclear isn’t the only solution on the table. Some activists note that small, community-run hydro and solar projects have allowed off-grid communities to weather the crisis surprisingly well. The Department of Energy announced recently that it would fast-track 22 renewable projects to help shore up the country’s energy supply.
But these aren’t perfect fixes. Geothermal and wind energy require expensive infrastructure, and hydro dries up in the summer.
“Renewables are good, but they are intermittent,” explains Alvin Caparanga, a chemical engineer and the dean of the School of Graduate Studies at Mapua University in Manila.
Nuclear power plants are far more efficient, relying on relatively small amounts of enriched uranium – which can be compressed into pellets and stockpiled on-site – to produce vast amounts of power.
“Nuclear is the most energy-dense source, so is advantageous in times like this,” says Carlo Arcilla, who recently retired as director of the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute.
Safety and environmental concerns
Nuclear power has faced strong opposition from religious leaders in the predominantly Catholic nation.
While the Catholic Church takes no official position on nuclear energy, bishops and priests across the archipelago have stressed the need for ecological stewardship, and a moral responsibility to prioritize human life over profit. In a recent statement against a proposed power plant in Pangasinan, Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan and other church leaders warned that there is “no secure, long-term solution for radioactive waste that remains deadly for thousands of years.”
The Diocese of Balanga, which serves the Bataan peninsula, has been just as unwavering in its resistance to rehabilitating the BNPP, as has Ms. Fajardo, who volunteers with KaBaRo-KaisaKa, a local organization advocating for women’s rights, environmental protection, and social change.
She wants the Marcos administration to address the immediate energy crisis by removing taxes on oil products and allocating funding to stabilize gas prices. Long-term, she wants to see leaders focus on implementing the Renewable Energy Act of 2008. “We have a big potential source here, especially solar energy,” she says.
Despite her family’s sky-high electric bills, she considers the BNPP project a nonstarter. Citing reported defects in the plant’s original construction and the Philippines’ location on a major geological fault line, she worries about creating a multigenerational crisis like the one seen in Ukraine.
But Dr. Arcilla, a geologist whose expertise is in nuclear waste disposal, says nuclear power has come a long way since the Chernobyl disaster. Whether they use the existing BNPP facility or build a new plant from scratch, “what we are planning here in the Philippines is something that has a containment structure. It’s a Western design,” he says.
Indeed, as the momentum around nuclear energy grows, so does the opposition – which is good, says Gayle Certeza, convener of the nuclear advocacy group Alpas Pinas, because at least there is public conversation.
For her, a responsible use of nuclear energy is when it powers the majority of households with “reliable, clean, and cheap electricity.” She doesn’t have anything against renewables, but she believes solar and wind can’t replace coal.
Since 2019, her group has coordinated with universities around the country to try to spread this message. “It’s usually the older people who have the primal fear of nuclear power, as opposed to the younger ones who are more tuned in to science and technology,” Ms. Certeza says.
And in the academe, there is a growing demand for nuclear science education. Pending approval from the Commission on Higher Education, Mapua University will offer a graduate program in nuclear science by August 2026, according to Dr. Caparanga.
Dr. Arcilla, meanwhile, says the country already has qualified engineers for the job, including some who have been working on the construction of nuclear power plants abroad and are willing to bring these skills home.
When asked whether the Philippines is prepared to reintroduce nuclear energy, Dr. Arcilla is confident: “It’s been more than ready,” he says.
