Southeast Asia’s only nuclear power plant is located in the province of Bataan in the Philippines, around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from the capital, Manila.
Built in the 1970s, the Bataan facility was mothballed before it ever opened amid the political instability of the end of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship — and in the wake of the 1986 disaster at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which killed at least 30 people and spewed radioactive fallout over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
But now, under the government of the late dictator’s son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the Philippines is turning to nuclear power as one solution to satisfying the country’s rapidly…