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Monday, November 09, 2026

Philippines

The mothballed nuclear power plant

By Warwick Pipe

Friday, 6 November 2026

A long history

It was back in the days after the 1973 oil crisis that the then Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos's administration decided to build a nuclear plant. The initial plan was for it to comprise of two 600 MWe units. By the time the contract was signed in February 1976, that plan had evolved into a single 621 MWe Westinghouse unit, to be built at Napot Point in Bataan.

Construction work began in July 1976 and was completed in 1984 at a cost of $1.9 billion. However, due to financial issues and safety concerns related to earthquakes, the plant was never loaded with fuel or operated. Following the April 1986 Chernobyl accident, the new President Corazon Aquino - who had taken over following a popular uprising - decided to mothball the plant.

Unlike many half-built plants, this one was essentially finished. Fresh nuclear fuel had even been delivered to the Bataan plant in 1984 ready for the planned commissioning process. That, of course, never happened and the fuel was eventually sold to Siemens for about $25 million in 1997.

The plant was put into a care and maintenance programme, where it was looked after in case a decision was ever taken to operate it. Ten years later, in April 2007, the Philippine government made the final payment for the plant. At the time the government was considering converting it into a natural gas-fired power plant, but this seemed impractical, and it has simply been maintained at a cost of about $800,000 per year. National Power Corporation has been the caretaker of the Bataan plant. As their aerial picture of the site and the control room shows, it is still in pretty good nick.

In 2008, an International Atomic Energy Agency mission commissioned by the government advised that Bataan could be refurbished and economically operated for 30 years. Refurbishment, with upgrade of safety and instrumentation & control systems, was estimated to cost between $800 million and $1 billion.

In December 2008, National Power Corporation commissioned Korea Electric Power Corporation (parent company of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power) to conduct an 18-month feasibility study on commissioning Bataan. Its preliminary recommendation in December 2009 was that Bataan should be refurbished. Meanwhile, Toshiba expressed interest in rehabilitating the plant. In May 2013, National Power Corporation urged the government to refurbish and commission the plant to address power shortages. It estimated the $1 billion cost as being one-third of building equivalent coal-fired capacity. Following sharp rises in electricity prices over 2014 to 2016, the Philippine Department of Energy was reported to be studying the prospect of reviving the project with South Korean help.

In November 2022, then Department of Energy Undersecretary of Energy Sharon Garin announced that it would cost $2.3 billion to refurbish and start up Bataan and that the department hoped to utilise a portion of its 2023 budget to commence a third-party assessment of the facility.

In October 2024, it was announced that Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) would complete a technical and economic feasibility study on the potential rehabilitation of the Bataan plant. The costs of the study were to be borne by KHNP. The study commenced in January 2025 in two phases: first assessing the plant's current condition; then evaluating refurbishment options.

The potential prize is a clear one - the Bataan plant's design it a well-proven one around the world - it is similar to Angra unit 1 in Brazil - pictured below - Krsko in Slovenia and Kori unit 2 in South Korea, which have all been in operation for around 45 years.

A new lease of life?

The Philippines has now gone full circle, with a new President Marcos - son of the 1970s/80s president - and a policy agenda to adopt nuclear power.

The country is working to establish the policy, regulatory and commercial foundations for its first nuclear power project, with a target of 1.2 GW of capacity by 2032 and a longer-term ambition to reach 4.8 GW by 2050, the World Nuclear Supply Chain conference in Manila heard.

And among the front-running options being considered is to refresh and start-up the Bataan plant itself.

Visiting the plant

So is this a feasible plan? There's no better way to assess the state of any nuclear power plant than to visit it yourself.

And I was among the attendees of World Nuclear Association's World Nuclear Supply Chain conference in Manila, the Philippines, who were lucky enough to have a tour of the plant site, which is in Barangay Nagbalayong, Morong, Bataan.

Following a four-hour drive to the plant site - about 100 kilometers (62 miles) west of Manila - the visit opened with an orientation and briefing from Bataan staff, who gave delegates an overview of the plant's history, from its construction through to its mothballing.

Plant manager Noel Hermano had a clear message: "This facility is the most significant nuclear-related asset, a complete industrial-scale nuclear power plant that has been preserved for almost four decades. Your visit today supports our continued commitment for nuclear energy with the stewardship of Department of Energy and with the guidance of the IAEA."

The walking tour through the plant took us through the security building, the water treatment facility, to the condenser unit, and the electrical room. After passing through a hatch into the plant's containment building, the groups were shown the reactor vessel and the steam generators. We then visited the fuel handling building, where the unused fuel for the plant had once been stored. This was followed by a visit to the plant's main control room and then the turbine-generator hall.

The general sense I got was that there are some understandably obvious signs of ageing - more than you might expect from a 40-year-old operating nuclear power plant - but, as you can see from the following selection of pictures (we were not allowed to take photographs inside the containment building) this was no abandoned site that had been left to the elements.

Seeing it up close certainly gives the impression that selecting it for the future nuclear power programme looks feasible, especially when the cost - likely to be a fraction of a completely new-build option - is taken into account. Much may have changed in the world over the past four decades, but debate about the potential operation of the Bataan plant continues.