The nuclear option: could this abandoned plant solve the Philippines’ energy crisis?

They’d grown old together, the nuclear plant and its caretaker.

Willie Torres had been there at the start in the 1970s, when the plant was still being built, a $2.3bn project set to become Asia’s first venture into nuclear energy. He stayed on as a technician when the plant became dogged by scandal. And he remained as one of a handful of staff when, in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, the government ordered it mothballed.

In the face of skyrocketing energy prices and the global push to slow climate change by moving away from fossil fuels, interest in nuclear power has surged anew in the Philippines and abroad. President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr announced weeks after taking office last year that “it is time” to revisit nuclear energy and mused openly about reviving the decades-old Bataan nuclear plant.

The plant begun in the mid-1970s by the president’s father, dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was beset by construction delays, cost overruns and charges that the Marcos family had taken bribes from contractors. When an independent commission concluded that the plant had “inadequate safeguards and could be a potential hazard”, opposition to the project grew. It was shelved in 1986 and its reactor was never turned on.

The plant, nestled in forested hills three hours outside Manila, became a monument to the excesses of the Marcos era. Swallows moved into its cavernous chambers and their gurgles echoed against the concrete walls. For decades, Torres held out hope that the plant would one day be reopened, and now, under Marcos Jr, it might. Activists who once marched against the plant because of its alleged safety lapses are mobilising their communities to fight again.

But the battlefield has changed.