Meralco Eyes Nuke Power

The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is teaming up with a US-based nuclear company pursuing its next-generation clean energy technologies.

Photo Insert: President Marcos Jr. and Meralco chairman and chief executive officer, Manuel V. Pangilinan have started discussions with a nuclear power firm.

This cropped up during the May visit of President Marcos Jr. where Meralco chairman and chief executive officer, Manuel V. Pangilinan, as part of the Philippine business team, started discussions with a nuclear power firm.

The US firm, whom Pangilinan did not identify, later visited Meralco a couple of months ago.

According to Pangilinan, Meralco had a “productive visit" to the US, where it was agreed upon that Meralco would send a team to Seattle and to the University of Illinois, where the nuclear firm has a working plant on the campus.

Marcos met with two nuclear power firms, NuScale Power Corp. and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp., during his last US visit. NuScale is engaged in developing small modular reactor technologies, while Ultra Safe is involved in micro-modular reactors.

Meralco is eyeing financing support from the US government for a feasibility study for the development of nuclear energy, particularly small modular reactors (SMRs), in the Philippines. But this is still a long way off, about five years, the company said.

SMRs, which have a capacity of between 50 megawatts (MW) and 300 MW, are faster to build compared to large nuclear plants and can be easily deployed to off-grid areas for a more reliable source of electricity.

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