Qualla: Bataan Nuclear Power Plant

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Icqgirl, CC BY-SA 3.0. It costs 40 million pesos a year just to keep the lights on inside a building that has never produced a single watt of electricity. The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant sits on Napot Point, a quiet government reservation on the Bataan Peninsula 100 kilometers west of Manila, its reactor vessel intact, its control room preserved, its cooling systems maintained -- all for a power plant completed in 1984 that was mothballed before it ever received fuel. It is a monument to ambition, corruption, and the peculiar limbo of a country that cannot afford to use it and cannot quite bring itself to let it go.

Image: Icqgirl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: The Deal That Doubled and Doubled Again

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Icqgirl, CC BY-SA 3.0. The story begins with an oil crisis. In July 1973, with the Middle East embargo squeezing the Philippine economy, President Ferdinand Marcos announced plans for a nuclear power plant under martial law. Two American companies submitted proposals: General Electric offered detailed ...

Image: Icqgirl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: Built, Broken, Never Fueled

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Icqgirl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Construction began in 1976 on the 3.57-square-kilometer reservation at Morong, Bataan. Three years later, the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania halted work. A safety inquiry uncovered more than 4,000 defects in the partially built plant. Construction resumed, and by 1984...

Image: Icqgirl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: The Zombie That Won't Stay Buried

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Icqgirl, CC BY-SA 3.0. Decades after mothballing, the plant refuses to become a ruin. Its reactor, turbines, and control systems have been continuously maintained, and successive governments have periodically revived the question of what to do with it. In 2010, Korea Electric Power Corporation estimate...

Image: Icqgirl | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: A Monument to What Might Have Been

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Icqgirl, CC BY-SA 3.0. In October 2024, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power agreed to conduct a new feasibility study for rehabilitation at no cost to the Philippine government -- the latest chapter in a saga that has outlasted every president since Marcos. The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant exists in a category a...

Image: Icqgirl | CC BY-SA 3.0