WASHINGTON – NuScale Power, a publicly traded American company that designs and markets small modular reactors (SMRs), on Monday disclosed plans to build SMRs worth up to US$7.5 billion (S$10 billion) in the Philippines.

Top officials of NuScale relayed their intention in a meeting with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr moments before he visited US President Joe Biden at the White House.

Mr Marcos, who is in the US capital for a five-day working visit, said NuScale’s SMR project would be critical in addressing the Philippines’ energy shortage, which has caused hours-long outages in several provinces.

“We need everything (to address the energy problem)… and this new technology is something,” Mr Marcos said.

Last September, Mr Marcos met NuScale executives during his working visit to New York.

Philippine presidential communications secretary Cheloy Garafil said the project was an unsolicited proposal of NuScale and its Philippine partner, Prime Infrastructure Capital, controlled by tycoon Enrique Razon Jr, who is among the business leaders accompanying Mr Marcos on his first official trip to Washington.

“(There are) no specific areas yet. But they are looking at Luzon,” Ms Garafil told the Inquirer.

The Oregon-based NuScale said it would soon conduct a study to identify possible sites in the Philippines for its SMRs.

Mr Clayton Scott, NuScale executive vice-president for business, assured the Philippine delegation that his company has “very high confidence” that its technology will perform as expected.

He said its technology was a product of research conducted by nuclear scientists and the “first and only one of its kind” that has secured the approval of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approved in January the design for the US’ first small reactor, NuScale’s 50MW advanced light-water SMR.

SMRs are a fraction of the size and cost of a conventional nuclear power reactor and can produce low-carbon electricity at about one-third of the generating capacity of traditional nuclear facilities, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Advocacy

Mr Marcos has strongly advocated the inclusion of nuclear power in the Philippines’ energy mix.

In his first State of the Nation Address in July 2022, he said the time was ripe to examine the country’s nuclear energy policies, noting that modern technology has created safeguards against possible accidents.

He said that should the Philippines decide to use nuclear energy, the government would follow IAEA guidelines that a country seeking to embark on a nuclear energy programme should first resolve as many as 19 infrastructure issues.

Even during his presidential campaign, Mr Marcos had already said he wanted the government to revisit the possible revival of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP), built during the presidency of his late father and namesake.

The building of the 620MW power plant in Morong, Bataan, which began in 1975 and took nine years, cost US$2.3 billion – bloated from the initial estimate of US$600 million, allegedly due to payoffs to some government officials.

But the BNPP was never fuelled because of public fears caused by the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, and charges of corruption.

Last November, Mr Marcos said he wanted to develop nuclear energy in the Philippines in partnership with France as the European nation has extensive experience in nuclear power production.

He made the remarks after his meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok.

Opposition

During her visit to the Philippines in the same month, US Vice-President Kamala Harris said Manila and Washington were in negotiations on possible nuclear energy cooperation.

In Manila, nuclear-free advocates questioned NuScale’s plan, saying that SMR technology has not been tested enough or made scalable in ways that are useful to Filipinos.

In separate interviews, the Nuclear and Coal-Free Bataan Movement (NCFBM) and Greenpeace Philippines said SMR technology was not only risky but even more difficult to maintain than conventional nuclear power plants.

SMRs have yet to be commercialised worldwide, said NCFBM coordinator Veronica Cabe.

Even now, only two countries – China and Russia – have SMRs, and they operate more as prototypes.

Citing a study by Stanford University and The University of British Columbia, Greenpeace campaigner Khevin Yu said SMRs generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power plants.

Ms Cabe said: “It might be a little too difficult to implement this because there are no existing examples of operating these. So the question is: Are they just going to use us as guinea pigs? What will be our role here?”

Moreover, said the nuclear-free advocates, the plan goes against the global trend of superpowers like Germany exiting nuclear power. PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/ASIA NEWS NETWORK