Built. Paid For. Never Switched On. ⚛️

There is a nuclear power plant in Bataan that was finished forty years ago and has never generated a single watt of electricity. Ferdinand Marcos Sr. decreed the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant using martial law powers after the 1973 oil crisis. His own advisory panel favored a detailed $700-million bid from General Electric; he awarded the contract instead to Westinghouse's less detailed $500-million proposal. In 2012, a court absolved the Marcoses for lack of evidence but ruled that Herminio Disini — a Marcos family relative — had received $50 million in commissions from Westinghouse and exerted undue influence over the contract. The cost ballooned from roughly $500 million to about $2.3 billion, financed almost entirely through foreign borrowing. Then came the problems. A post-Three Mile Island survey found numerous defects. The plant sits near Mount Natib, a potentially active volcano, and close to known fault lines. When Marcos was ousted in February 1986, Corazon Aquino mothballed it — the fuel was never loaded. Chernobyl two months later ended any remaining momentum. But the foreign loans were legally binding. Debt payments peaked at 4.36% of total government spending in 1988, and from 1987 to 2007 the Philippines paid an average of about $246,000 per day. The final payment was made in April 2007 — ₱64.7 billion in total. The plant still costs millions each year just to preserve and air-condition the machinery. Now it may be revived. Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power began a feasibility study in January 2025, and in March 2026 KHNP, the Korea Export-Import Bank and Meralco signed an MOU on nuclear cooperation. Rehabilitation is estimated at around $1 billion over 4–5 years, and President Marcos Jr. revived nuclear power in his 2026 SONA. A 2024 survey showed strong public support for the revival. Not everyone agrees. The scientists' group Agham calls the plant antiquated and faulty. Greenpeace warns that a regulator and nuclear waste storage would cost billions, with seismic risk making a safe disposal site hard to find. The Philippine Nuclear Research Institute, by contrast, considers reactivation technically feasible, and the same Westinghouse design still operates safely in South Korea, Slovenia and Brazil. 💬 Would you switch it on? Comment below. 🔔 Subscribe for more stories about the real Philippines. ——— 📌 SOURCES: World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Engineering International, Inquirer, Gulf News, Inside Story, South East Asia Business Post, VERA Files, Agham, Greenpeace, PNRI. As of August 2026. 📌 NOTE: The 2012 court ruling absolved the Marcos family for lack of evidence; it found that Herminio Disini received the commissions. Sources differ on current annual maintenance costs. #BataanNuclearPowerPlant #Philippines #BNPP