NUKE PLANT. Trade Secretary Alfredo Pascual (left) meets with Southern Infrastructure Pty. Ltd. managing director Paul Watson in Adelaide, Australia on Monday (Oct. 9, 2023). Watson discussed the company’s plans to build thorium-fired reactors in the country. (Courtesy of DTI)
MANILA – Australia-based Southern Infrastructure Pty. Ltd. and Kaizen ANZ Pty. Ltd. want to invest in a 40-megawatt (MW) thorium reactor in the Philippines, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said.
DTI Secretary Alfredo Pascual met with representatives of the two firms in Adelaide on Monday, a day before the 6th Philippines-Australia Ministerial Meeting.
“In the meeting, they discussed a potential project in developing, building, and operating an initial 40 MW thorium-fueled simple, high-temperature gas-cooled reactor STGR20 to deliver a safe, sustainable, and green base load energy at the lowest kWh (kilowatt hour) rate in the market at USD0.038 per kWh,” DTI told reporters in a Viber message.
Pascual underscored the opportunities in the Philippine energy sector as the country looks into alternative sources, such as hydrogen and nuclear, while exploring further studies to establish relevant policies and sustainable practices.
The DTI said the Australian firms want a public-private partnership agreement.
Aside from producing cheap electricity, the system is also capable of producing green hydrogen for transport, desalinated water as a by-product, and gamma radiation as another by-product to allow long-term storage of food products.
“The project will start by mid-2024 and finish construction by 2027 and is expected to generate at least 1,000 local jobs during its construction and operation,” the DTI added.
Thorium is being used as fuel to produce nuclear energy, which is expected to be safer and produces much less nuclear wastes than the nuclear power plants that use uranium.
