With back-to-back earthquakes shaking the country in the past 10 days, who in their right mind would now gamble their backyards and communities on hosting nuclear power facilities?

This is the ironic cherry on top: the President just signed a nuclear safety regulation law that breezed through the Senate with not a single legislator even pretending to care—no questions asked, backed by nothing but a flimsy paper bicam. These are clear signs that our lawmakers either didn’t think, didn’t study, or they just don’t give a damn. No wonder this country is neck-deep in corruption done through budget insertions by Congress, because we’re being governed by slackers in suits.

But what our lawmakers chose to ignore or arrogantly shrugged off, Mother Nature is now pounding into us with fearsome flashpoint: that this country sits on a ticking geologic time bomb. And with the PhilAtom (Philippine Atomic Energy Regulatory Authority) Law signed, it’s high time our policymakers snap out of their complacency and put Filipino lives above politics, greed, and daredevil shortcut decisions before it’s too late.

Mother Nature doesn’t send memos or write dangerously-negligent laws or circulars; she can ravage us with earthquakes, tsunamis, and landslides to remind us that setting up installations—including nuclear facilities—on fragile ground is like stacking dynamite on a fault line and praying it doesn’t shake and blow up.

Okay, it’s manifestly argued that the March 2011 Fukushima meltdown wasn’t caused by the earthquake, but by the tsunami that followed. However, that’s splitting hairs when one actually punches in the other’s ticket; because earthquakes and tsunamis are typically a deadly double act, and pretending they’re separate threats could just be a perilous denial.

Strong seismic activities, in particular, may damage nuclear power plants by causing structural failure, rupturing coolant pipes, disrupting electrical systems, or knocking out backup safety systems. And if we circle back to the Fukushima tragedy: what it painfully taught us was that when earthquakes and tsunamis team up, nuclear disaster isn’t just a risk, it’s a certainty.

In last week’s sub-committee budget hearing for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Senator Loren Legarda dropped the initial not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) hammer, declaring that she will strongly oppose any move to build a nuclear power facility in her home turf of Antique.

“I’m not in favor… I will block it every step of the way. Whichever government agency is studying it, do not waste your time and your resources. And I will oppose your budget,” she warned.

When the senator’s anti-nuclear stand hit the headlines, the sidetracked segment of energy sector players had this one scorching question: where were these lawmakers when the PhilAtom Law sailed through the Senate without a single challenge? It’s easy to theatricalize everything on the public mind at this point—but when it mattered, the chamber was silent and the vote was rubber-stamped without so much as a raised eyebrow. The entire process was just like any other ordinary day at the office.

With the series of disasters pummeling the country in recent days, the NIMBY chorus is only getting louder—what used to be a policy debate is now emerging as a full-blown standoff between fear-fueled resistance versus the unforgiving fact that turning a blind eye to the future may also derail the very solutions our energy system demands.

And from hereon for nuclear, PhilAtom holds the steering wheel as it is now tasked with navigating the storm of political noise, public fear, and in taking razor-sharp, no-nonsense decisions on where—or if—nuclear projects should ever see the light of day in the Philippines. If they will do things right and safely, then certainly, they will eventually deserve our applause.

Separately, the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development (CEED) had lambasted the Department of Energy (DOE) and other government offices for obliviously cheerleading and being messianic about nuclear power, while willfully ignoring glaring realities that the Philippines sits on a disaster minefield, where one fatal quake can turn false confidence into radioactive chaos.

“We are dismayed to see the DOE and other government offices acting blind to our country’s high disaster and climate vulnerability with their active promotion of nuclear energy use. The (Cebu) earthquake is a tragic reminder of the precarious geographic position of the Philippines, it being located along the Pacific Ring of Fire,” the organization stressed.

It added, “given the perennial risk of earthquakes in the Philippines, compounded by intensifying climate risks, there is simply no safe place in the country for a nuclear power facility.”

The group likewise pulled no punches when it noted that “the entire value chain for nuclear energy courts risks at every point.” With no viable uranium reserves, the Philippines would have to import nuclear fuel, which would also put communities and workers at risk of disaster during transportation. To date, there also remains no permanently safe mode of disposal or storage of nuclear waste anywhere on the planet.

CEED similarly highlighted that “new nuclear technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs) are all still unproven technologies.” SMRs have too many risks to their supply chains, with SMR projects being too expensive and too slow to build to be viable for decarbonization.

This isn’t a blanket rejection of nuclear as part of our energy future, but policymakers need a hard-hitting reminder: no amount of ambition can mask the raw vulnerabilities etched into our country’s geology and social fabric, and ignoring these cracks early on is an irresponsible wager on the nation’s overall survival.

Somehow, the DOE has already laid its cards on the table on targeted nuclear sites—naming Bataan, Pangasinan, Palawan, Camarines Norte, and Masbate as prospects; with it qualifying that most of the areas eyed are in Luzon because the island has huge electricity demand.

But imagine if the government mindlessly picks nuclear sites again without rigorous safety audits and structural checks—similar to the PhilAtom law’s ‘one-day policymaking’ frenzy in the Senate just to flaunt a headline victory. We’re setting ourselves up for disaster, because there’s a world of difference between a hollow press release and actually doing things right, and God forbid, we must not settle for anything less than the latter.

Remember, the Cebu earthquake exploded from a fault line thought dead for 400 years; so has the government even bothered to update its map of hidden geological hazards—both the active and inactive fault lines?

And when it comes to engaging the communities that would host these plants, is there even an active and serious communication strategy to keep locals in the loop about risks they would eventually be confronted with? Because it’s not just about natural disasters; it’s also about whether locals know the safety nets in place—if any—to shield them from radiation exposure, sabotage, or terror threats that don’t knock before they strike.

Without fresh and in-depth studies on the proposed sites, the harsh truth stands: there’s no patch of land in this country safe enough to host a nuclear plant—unless you’re foolishly dense enough to stake Filipino lives on borrowed time and wish fervently the ground doesn’t wear away first.

Again, it should be a relentless wake-up call and reality check: that in seismic hotspots like the Philippines, nuclear plants must be engineered with earthquake-proof defenses—but these would come as costly and complex installations loaded with safety redundancies. And the consumers better know upfront that the heftier price tag will be embedded deeply into their bills and future security.