The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) on Wednesday said subsidiary Meralco PowerGen Corp. (MGen) is exploring the idea of generating electricity from nuclear sources and has held initial discussions with American experts and learn how to proceed.
“During the visit of President Marcos to the (United) States, some of our people met with two nuclear manufacturing plant executives and one of them visited us here in Meralco about two or three months ago,” Manuel Pangilinan, Meralco chairman and chief executive officer, told energy journalists at a news briefing early this week.
According to Pangilinan, the meeting proved “very productive” such that Meralco plans sending “a team to Seattle and to the University of Illinois where they have a working plant in campus and see how it operates.”
Pangilinan also said he urged the prospective partner firm if the company can provide Meralco with “a taste” of the technology via a pilot project in the Philippines. He quickly acknowledged such a technology is at least “five years away from commercial production” in the Philippines.
“(We) suggested if we could actually buy and build a pilot plant here in the Philippines so at least we could have a taste of how it looks, (of) how we can build and how we can operate it. So, that’s in progress,” Pangilinan said.
“We still have to schedule those trips to the States and coordinate with them to get that going,” he added.
Meralco, through MGen and Global Business Power Corp, generates over 2,400 MW by using coal, liquified natural gas, diesel and solar technology.
Going nuclear could prove game changing.
