PHILIPPINES NUCLEAR MARKET | SPECIAL REPORT
Left:
The largest grid covers the main island of Luzon where the capital city of Manila is located
transmission lines to provide main grid power. Early market development of micro-reactors appears to focus on two nominal sizes – 1 MWe and 5 MWe. The announced intentions of most of these developers are to offer portable units, requiring minimal infrastructure. Remote manual operation with minimal local staffing without extensive technical training is also mentioned. These design goals of output and operations appear to match well with replacing or supplementing some of the diesel generators on the micro-grids. To see how many micro-reactors might be accommodated
on the country’s micro-grids, the government database for those existing micro-grids shows where the average micro- grid demand was 5 MWe or above. The thinking was that the minimum grid demand would likely require load following on the part of the micro-reactor and peak demands over 5 MWe would be met by the existing diesel plants. The cost of pulling an expended unit and replacing it with a fresh packaged unit, as well as the more expensive SWU requirements of the fuel, suggest that lower capacity factors for micro-reactors would have less of an economic penalty compared to large LWRs. To provide an economic ceiling on micro-reactors
to provide developers with a levelised cost reference, the government’s rate case filings of current “true cost of generation” for each micro-grid in pesos per kWh is multiplied by a 90% capacity factor and a nominal 5 MWe net output, although customers are charged a lower, subsidised rate. In one case, a nominal output of 4 MWe was assumed since this better fit that one specific grid. Converting into annual revenue (in USD at 55.65 pesos per dollar), reveals the maximum cost of diesel-fuelled power generation that could be displaced by installing a micro- reactor.
Using these search rules, four micro-grids exist today
where a 5 MWe micro-reactor might fit. The details are shown in Table 3, above left. Note that site characteristics that might prohibit a nuclear installation were not considered. The specific names of the four micro-grids are withheld due to possible political sensitivities. Some of the specific data cells in the published data are questionable and are highlighted in yellow and otherwise ignored in this survey. However, these questionable data points don’t affect the overall conclusions.
A similar survey was performed but using a nominal
1 MWe reactor baseline. The data from this analysis is shown in Table 4, above left. For three grids, the average load suggested that additional 1 MWe units should considered and displaced revenue calculated. In two cases, only 800 kWe was used for base-loading.
The nuclear opportunity This analysis gives us an early estimate of the potential Philippines nuclear power market to 2040 as a first cut survey using various assumptions of market penetration, load growth, product availability/performance, and capital availability. The conclusions are summarised in Table 5, which is shown below left. Will these estimates withstand future events and come to
pass? That will depend on the efforts of nuclear designers, power industry financiers, and the Filipinos. ■
Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank Christopher Groff, Gabor Solomon, and Dan Yurman, for contributing to this article.
Above: Bataan is a mothballed 630 MWe nuclear plant
www.neimagazine.com | October 2023 | 29
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