As turmoil in the Persian Gulf pushes fuel prices higher, governments from Manila to Jakarta are moving faster on nuclear plans once treated as distant or optional. What has changed is the pressure behind it. What once looked like a long-term option now feels much harder to postpone.
The disruption has exposed a vulnerability Southeast Asia can no longer ignore. In that context, nuclear energy is being reconsidered less as a long-term ambition than as a near-term necessity.
Philippines Nuclear Power: From Bataan to a Strategic Comeback
Southeast Asia’s only nuclear power facility sits in Bataan, about 64 kilometers from Manila. Built in the 1970s and completed in 1985 after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos, and in the shadow of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. That accident reshaped how governments and publics viewed nuclear risk.
A feasibility study on rehabilitating the plant is expected this year. Separately, the Department of Energy plans to introduce
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