As interest in nuclear energy hots up, Southeast Asia countries are closely watching each other’s moves

As demand for energy grows, so too is interest in civilian nuclear energy, including among Southeast Asian countries. The first of this three-part Big Read series across three Saturdays in October takes a look at the state of play in the region. Look out for the next two instalments on safety and technological advancements, and alternative sources of clean energy.
Southeast Asia’s only nuclear power plant lies around 70km west of the Philippine capital Manila. But since its completion in 1985, it has never been powered up.
Never mind that the 620-megawatt Bataan nuclear power plant was the culmination of a nearly 30-year nuclear development programme that took more than a decade and over US$2 billion to build. It became a casualty of bad timing.
First, a partial meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in Pennsylvania in the United States in March 1979 prompted a pause in the Bataan plant construction. A safety inquiry then revealed defects and safety concerns.
In February 1986, then-president Ferdinand Marcos, who had decided to build the Bataan plant, was overthrown.
Two months later, the deadly Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine sealed the fate of the Philippines’ reactor.
Now, nearly 40 years on, the Bataan plant has become a tourist attraction and a symbol of how complicated it is for a country to venture into nuclear energy.
Still, that has not stopped some Southeast Asian countries from seriously considering nuclear as a potential energy source, as they mull ways to harvest clean energy to power their growing economies while battling climate change.
In fact, some countries in this region began exploring its feasibility decades ago, with research nuclear reactors being set up in this region as early as the 1960s.
Progress has largely stalled over a lack of public acceptance and concerns over safety, which intensifies each time high-profile reactor incidents occur, their rarity and relatively low fatality rates notwithstanding.
After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which remains the only nuclear plant mishap with fatalities, the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in March 2011 stoked safety concerns, derailing nuclear energy ambitions yet again for some countries. 
Although nobody died as a direct result of the Fukushima disaster, radiation was released into the atmosphere when a tsunami, following a major earthquake, damaged several reactors there. 
That same month, Thailand announced an indefinite halt to its plans to build nuclear power plants.
But in the decade or so since, interest in nuclear energy has begun to pick up again in the region, driven by an increasing need for energy and concerns over the environment.  
According to baseline scenario projections in the latest Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Energy Outlook report released on Sep 26, regional energy consumption is expected to increase 2.6 times by 2050 from 2022 levels. 
Indonesia this year brought forward projections of operating its first commercial nuclear power from 2045 to as early as 2030 to 2034, according to its National Research and Innovation Agency.
Singapore and a few other neighbouring nations have made it clear that they have not made a decision, but nuclear energy is not off the table and is being studied alongside other possible sustainable energy options.
The states have also outlined an agreement on how members should monitor radiation and protocols for handling a potential nuclear crisis.
While all these steps lay the groundwork for the eventuality of a nuclear plant operating in the region, experts told CNA TODAY that many issues have to be tackled before that comes to fruition.
These include the availability of funds to invest in nuclear energy, the level of public acceptance and political will.
But even as these challenges are being sorted out, each country should build up its own talent and capability in nuclear energy development and management, experts added.
Even if they do not develop their own reactors, they will need to know how to keep their citizens safe and handle a potential crisis if their neighbours adopt nuclear energy.
Singapore has said on multiple occasions that it has not made a decision on nuclear energy, but efforts and resources have been invested over the years to sustain nuclear research here. 
Back in 2012, a pre-feasibility study concluded that large conventional nuclear reactors were not suitable for Singapore, with authorities saying that Singapore was too small and densely populated for one.
Still, the study recommended that the Republic continue to strengthen its capabilities to monitor the progress of nuclear energy technologies worldwide.
In a joint response to CNA TODAY’s queries, the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI), the National Environment Agency (NEA) and the Energy Market Authority (EMA) said EMA has been keeping tabs on advanced nuclear technologies such as small modular reactors. 
These are small but advanced nuclear reactors that have a power capacity of roughly one-third that of traditional nuclear power reactors.
They noted that some of these designs have the potential to offer significant improvements in safety and costs, though some of these new technologies are still undergoing development. 
“Any decision to deploy new energy technologies, including nuclear, will be carefully considered against their safety, reliability, costs, and environmental sustainability in Singapore’s context,” they said.
Given how complex and specialised nuclear energy is, Singapore would need to tap people with a wide range of capabilities to fully understand it, the country’s agencies said.
They pointed, for example, to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) recommendation that any country considering adopting nuclear energy should develop 19 different infrastructure areas, such as radioactive waste management and legal and regulatory frameworks.
“According to the IAEA, it typically takes a country new to nuclear energy decades to progress from initial capability building to the commissioning of its first nuclear power plant,” they noted. 
In the meantime, Singapore has progressively developed its capabilities in nuclear science and technology to assess the implications and benefits of new technologies and regional nuclear energy developments.
For example, the Government committed S$63 million to set up the Singapore Nuclear Research and Safety Initiative (SNRSI) at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
To date, SNRSI has awarded 30 scholarships for postgraduate studies and has developed a pipeline of around 40 researchers in areas related to nuclear science and engineering.
“We have continued to invest to build up SNRSI’s capabilities in nuclear safety analysis, radiobiology and radiochemistry, with the aim to build up a team of 100 nuclear safety experts,” said the authorities.
Dr Chung Keng Yeow, director of SNRSI, told CNA TODAY that Singapore has been promoting a “strong safety culture” at regional platforms and is building expertise in areas such as the study of reactors, detection of radioactive materials in the environment and effects of radiation on human health.
By developing its own nuclear expertise, the Republic will know the “appropriate measures” to take and be of help to our neighbours should an “extremely unlikely” event of a severe accident happen in the future, he added.
Singapore has also formed ties with nuclear powers and experts around the world, allowing it to tap external expertise:
“Singapore is considered a later entrant and is only just starting in scratching the surface of a national nuclear research programme,” said Dr Victor Nian, a founding co-chairman for the Centre for Strategic Energy and Resources (CSER), an independent think tank based in Singapore.
Experts point instead to Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines as the frontrunners in terms of nuclear research in the region.
For example, these countries were the first three Southeast Asian nations to sign the 123 Agreement with the US. The agreement provides for peaceful nuclear cooperation such as the export of nuclear material from the US to another country, as well as educational and technological transfers between partner countries.
But as the timeline shows, the adoption of nuclear energy in this region has been far from smooth sailing:
INDONESIA
MALAYSIA
THE PHILIPPINES 
VIETNAM 
As these series of starts and stops may indicate, Southeast Asia is not anywhere near operating its first nuclear power plant, even as there are already over 400 operable reactors around the rest of the world as at the end of 2023. 
It is not because of any geological factors: Although countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia lie along the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a region prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, many locations in Southeast Asia have been assessed to be suitable for nuclear deployment, noted Dr Nian.
For example, sites considered by Indonesia for nuclear power plants are not in earthquake-prone zones. 
“With a careful and detailed feasibility study involving seismic, climatic, and other external risk factors, it is unlikely for ASEAN countries to face higher risk factors than any other part of the world,” said Dr Nian. 
Furthermore, nuclear power plants are designed to withstand earthquakes and there are some operating in earthquake-prone regions such as Japan, Italy and California, noted Dr Alvin Chew, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). 
In addition to existing safety mechanisms in nuclear reactors, newer technologies such as small modular reactors have emerged, resulting in a reduced Emergency Planning Zone, or the designated area around a nuclear power plant where special plans must be put in place to protect the public in case of a radiological emergency. They also have lower upfront costs than larger plants.
Potentially having more advanced and safer technologies to choose from is one advantage that newcomer countries can have, said director of SNRSI Chung Keng Yeow.
Dr Chung also added: “(Newcomer countries) would have learnt from the experience of Fukushima, in terms of site selection, and implement many additional steps to ensure that similar or even other situations will not happen.”
But nuclear experts from Singapore and neighbouring countries cited a gamut of reasons why strong adoption of nuclear energy remains likely decades away for this region. 
In Indonesia, for example, while nuclear energy has been in the pipeline since the 1950s, the availability of cheaper alternatives has been a hurdle to committing to developing the nuclear sector, said Mr Putra Adhiguna, the managing director of Indonesia-based think tank Energy Shift Institute.  
“The biggest challenge has been the fact that we have a lot of cheap coal, which means that nothing else can compete,” said Mr Putra.
As an emerging market, Indonesia is also highly sensitive to price, so the large capital expenditure needed to build and commission a nuclear power plant has been a big obstacle.
Experts also pointed to the significant economic costs involved in the case of any nuclear accident.
Cleanup costs for the 2011 Fukushima accident led to government compensation of around 13.5 trillion yen (US$94 billion) to pay for reparations and cleanup efforts. 
“It’s one thing to build the power plant, but it’s another to actually guarantee the long-term liability of an event like Fukushima,” said Mr Putra. 
A 2018 study exploring public perceptions of nuclear energy in Singapore found that most participants “immediately associated” the risk of nuclear energy with Fukushima and Chernobyl, with many participants describing this form of energy as dangerous or highly destructive. 
Researchers noted that participants “mistakenly perceived” that the daily operation of nuclear power plants can emit radiation and harm public health, and wrongly believed that the technology used in nuclear power plants could be weaponised.
Experts pointed out that gaining public support, especially for residents living near potential nuclear power plant sites, is also crucial. 
Dr Chew from RSIS said that given there is currently no nuclear power plant in operation in Southeast Asia, the public perception of nuclear energy will “remain low”. 
“However, acceptance of nuclear energy in the region is changing, accelerated by the fact that climate change poses a much greater threat to humanity over traditional security issues,” said Dr Chew. 
“Furthermore, economic growth and technology advancement in the region will fuel the rise in energy demand and consumption.”
Agreeing, Dr Chung from SNRSI said that as many see nuclear power as part of the solution to mitigating climate change, there is a “strong likelihood” that such plants may be built as early as the 2030s or 2040s.
When Southeast Asia does decide to adopt nuclear energy, it will be a major undertaking: The IAEA has said that a nuclear power programme involves a commitment of “around 100 years”. 
Given this fact, experts say stable governance and political will are critical factors that will shape the timeline of nuclear energy adoption in any country.
“Given that the adoption of nuclear energy for newcomer states could typically take about 10 to 15 years, it is important to have a stable government that can see through the entire planning and adoption process,” Dr Chew of RSIS said.
He added that nuclear energy can be a politically sensitive issue in some countries in this region, due to the nascent public awareness and knowledge of the technology.
There are current examples showing just how the topic of nuclear energy can become a hot political issue. In Australia right now, nuclear energy is being debated, with different political parties taking strong and opposing stances, ahead of the 2025 national elections, on whether or not to deploy nuclear reactors there for the first time.
The opposition conservative Liberal Party in June this year unveiled seven sites across Australia where it proposes to build nuclear power plants by the mid to late 2030s. The plan is strongly opposed by the ruling Labor Party.
In another example of how a change in leadership can suddenly halt a country’s development of nuclear energy, Mr Nik Nazmi, Malaysia’s sustainability minister, said during a conference in Singapore in June said that his country “had always, for many, many years, researched on nuclear energy”.
But this research largely stopped after Dr Mahathir Mohamad took over premiership for the second time in 2018, he added.
As things stand right now, interest in nuclear energy remains uneven in this region, with experts pointing to Brunei, Laos and Cambodia as countries with little interest.
“However, these countries have also participated very actively in discussion or trainings in the other use of nuclear technologies (other than nuclear power) organised by the IAEA or at the regional level,” said Dr Chung.
Dr Nian of the CSER said: “It is important for ASEAN Member States to strengthen collaborations in nuclear research and education, and more importantly, keep the neighbours informed of newbuild and other critical decisions with potential regional impacts.”
He added that there is consensus among the countries in this region to cooperate in areas such as nuclear safety, security and safeguards, as it is key to ensuring the smooth adoption of nuclear energy by any individual country in the region. 
This consensus was made clear by the founding of the ASEAN Network of Regulatory Bodies on Atomic Energy (ASEANTOM) in 2013, despite the current lack of any operational nuclear power plant in the region.
ASEANTOM encourages greater transparency through the sharing of technical and safety-related information across member nations.
The network also collaborates with IAEA to develop protocols for radiological emergencies. For example, one protocol states that if an event were to occur that results in a nuclear or radiological emergency, the nation where the incident occurred must share all available radiation monitoring data with other member states.
Regardless of whether countries in the region have plans to adopt nuclear energy, having all ASEAN nations sign onto IAEA safety and security conventions should be encouraged, said Dr Chew.
For example, if all ASEAN countries accede to legally binding safety treaties, such as IAEA’s early notification and assistance conventions, their response measures in the case of any regional nuclear emergency will be enhanced.
“Building up national capabilities in nuclear safety and security are quintessential aspects when the region operates nuclear power plants,” he said.
While countries in the region will determine their own timelines and strategy to address climate change and their energy security challenges – including whether or not to tap nuclear energy – there is little doubt that they are closely watching each other’s moves given the profound implications.
If a Southeast Asian nation were to adopt nuclear energy, it is likely to induce other countries in the region to consider doing the same, as they would already have to develop “auxiliary nuclear capabilities” in areas such as emergency response or nuclear security, said Dr Chew.
“These latent (areas of) expertise developed will likely fuel states to consider the nuclear option,” he added.
“The timelines are not dependent on everyone within the region watching each other… But certainly with one country in ASEAN going nuclear, it will likely trigger the momentum for others to jump in as well,” said Dr Chew.