Meralco studies building larger nuclear power plants

By Alena Mae S. Flores – July 30, 2024, 8:20 pm
from manilastandard.net

Power retailer Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) is studying the development of bigger nuclear power plants including conventional nuclear facilities to secure the country’s future energy requirements, top executives said Tuesday.

Meralco and US-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp. (USNC) began conducting a feasibility study on the use of micro modular reactor (MMR) facilities for power generation, but now also consider small modular reactors (SMRs) with bigger capacity.

“You are well aware of this MMR program of Meralco with USNC, but we’re looking beyond that because we know that if the government has this plan to have 1,200 megawatts of nuclear power by 2032, micromodular is not enough,” Meralco chief operating officer Ronnie Aperocho said.

“We need to look into SMR and maybe the conventional nuclear,” Aperocho said, adding the building nuclear facilities and other power plants supports President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s mandate of critical infrastructure development.

Meralco chairman Manuel Pangilinan said company officials visited South Korea, particularly Busan, to study Doosan’s nuclear manufacturing facility.

Pangilinan said they also visited Korean companies that are doing the SMRs with US nuclear companies. “They said it’s turned out to be more difficult than anticipated,” he said.

“So the timetable for deployment of SMR or MMR, micromodular or small modular reactors, could be moved back as far as 2032, 2035,” he said.

Pangilinan said they were also studying the capacity of MMRs and SMRs pegged at about 20 MW, and 50 MW to 70 MW, respectively.

“Whatever the size might be, roughly about eight to ten years from today in terms of commercial deployment, we still are very keen to purchase a proof-of-concept plant, if it’s one to five megawatts. We’d like that deployed somewhere in, maybe, whatever, in some far-flung place, and see if that gives us the experience to build it, operate it,” Pangilinan said.