MANILA Electric Co. (Meralco) plans to work with the French government on a feasibility study for a potential 1,200-megawatt (MW) conventional nuclear power plant, a company official said.

“We might be entering into a feasibility study with the French government. But this is for not the small ones but the bigger ones like conventional… feasibility study, especially on site selection,” Ronnie L. Aperocho, Meralco’s executive vice-president and chief operating officer, told reporters on Friday last week.

Mr. Aperocho said Meralco had a series of meetings with Électricité de France SA, commonly known as EDF — a multinational electric utility company owned by the government of France.

“The nuclear technology of the French government has matured. They started building nuclear power plants in 1948. Almost 75% of their energy mix is nuclear [energy]… They have a proven safety record,” he said.

For the Philippines, the nuclear energy technology is still young, with the government eyeing to have commercially operational nuclear power plants by 2032 with at least 1,200 MW.

Meralco and the French government are finalizing the terms of reference that are expected to be completed in the next two to three months.

Mr. Aperocho said that Meralco is “scanning all the available technologies.”

To recall, Meralco signed a memorandum of understanding last year with US-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp. for a pre-feasibility study on micro-modular reactors.

Meralco is eyeing the same for small modular reactors, which have a capacity of 300 MW and above, Mr. Aperocho said.

While Meralco fuels its nuclear power plants, Mr. Aperocho noted that development depends on the government’s direction.

“We’ll really depend on the legislation,” the Meralco executive said. “So, in parallel, we’re just preparing the groundwork already, all the studies, so that if there’s a law already, we can get started right away… because to build a nuclear power plant, it takes so many years. That’s why the timeline should be strategic.”

Under the Department of Energy’s Philippine Nuclear Energy Program, an independent nuclear regulatory commission is targeted to be fully operational by 2026, including the determination of the government’s role through policies and/or legislation.

Thus, the necessary laws on the nuclear legal and regulatory framework must be in place by 2025. By 2027, a legal framework for the mechanism for power contracting should be established.

“We see nuclear as the ultimate solution for our requirement for a reliable power supply baseload,” Mr. Aperocho said.

Meralco’s controlling stakeholder, Beacon Electric Asset Holdings, Inc., is partly owned by PLDT Inc.

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