There may be no radiation leaks seeping into the country’s power system yet, but it seems the policymaking core of the Department of Energy (DOE) is already 'overheating' and treading halfway into a meltdown.

The DOE’s newly issued Circular (No. 2025-10-0019) reads like an incentive policy, but it's more of a legal trap and a government-induced instability in power system design—one that risks sabotaging grid efficiency while openly defying a Supreme Court ruling on competitive bidding for all power supply agreements (PSAs).

Top of the queue is the department’s decree that the pioneer nuclear plant “will be treated as a baseload facility and granted priority dispatch in coordination with the DOE, the Independent Market Operator (IMO) and the System Operator (SO), regardless of the nuclear technology deployed.”

This demands urgent technical reassessment: forcing nuclear into the ‘first dispatch’ order is risky because it is an inflexible plant. It needs to generate power continuously and runs at or near full capacity round-the-clock; it cannot be curtailed even if there's excess electricity in the grid; and ramping it up or down is technically challenging and danger-laden.

Conversely, other technologies like coal, gas, and renewables can adjust output to balance supply and demand in the grid.

Despite the DOE’s claim that nuclear will ‘complement’ renewables, the former’s priority dispatch status will actually displace high-output renewables off the grid, undermining both the availability of clean energy and cheaper electricity at their peak generation.

And with the influx of variable renewables coming online in the years ahead, the Philippine grid is headed for a rollercoaster volatility. The gust of wind and the ray of the sun will write the schedule, meaning sudden surpluses and sharp drops will become the power system’s new normal.

For instance, at midday, especially during summer months when solar is blazing and could supposedly provide cheaper electricity, nuclear’s priority-run status blocks the grid from taking all of that lower-cost power. In a way, it’s a perfect demonstration that inflexible nuclear can shove renewables aside just when they are most abundant.

Bottom line: the DOE’s nuclear rule ignores the basic physics of power system operations and efficient grid management by letting inflexible baseload power push out cheaper, abundant renewables—and we must note that most of these RE plants are underpinned by government-awarded contracts.

In that configuration, the system operator faces a ‘no win’ situation: either cut back renewable output that will then waste zero-carbon power; or risk overloading the grid, hence, forcing power dumps that will not just hurt the economy and consumers’ pockets, but also the environment, because nuclear at this point is still not veritably classified as a poster child of green energy.

To make matters worse, nuclear’s inflexibility combined with surging renewables could push the grid to the edge, risking probable meltdowns or blackouts when frequency stability teeters on the brink. Essentially, when demand can’t soak up the surplus and storage is scarce, overgeneration can push the system into overvoltage, frequency excursions, or even forced outages that could trigger cascading failures in the power system.

And to cap it all off, there is also the concern of thermal stress risk on the nuclear reactors. If the grid cannot fully absorb nuclear output because of capacities also coming from other first-dispatch plants like RE and indigenous gas-fed plants, the nuclear facility may be compelled to ramp down or shut down rapidly, but nuclear plants aren’t designed for frequent or rapid cycling. In well-run power systems, it is gas that flexes to balance renewables, while nuclear stays locked in as steady baseload.

Technical experts caution that repeated load-following or emergency shutdowns (or what they call SCRAMs) can slam nuclear reactors with thermal stress, risking fuel damage, accelerated wear; or in a worst-case scenario, serious safety incidents and extreme grid chaos.

My goodness DOE, it’s so difficult to understand where your imagination has been wandering when it comes to policy framing for nuclear. Secretary Sharon Garin may be passionate about adding nuclear power capacity and we may rightfully need it in the country’s future energy mix; but reckless policy will not exactly attract investors. That’s flirting with disaster and compromising the entire chain of the country’s power system.

If there’s any silver lining, nuclear won’t hit the grid until 2032, giving the DOE and the next administration enough time to fix policies and stop treating it like a trial-and-error experiment. Sure, it creates uncertainty for investors for now, but fixing rules to become long-enduring policies would beat putting the power system straight into irreparable damage.

The DOE Circular similarly sidesteps competitive bidding, directly clashing with a Supreme Court decision which prescribes that all PSAs to be underwritten by distribution utilities (DUs) must go through a competitive selection process (CSP or bidding). Somehow, this loophole is shaping up as a major legal headache as the National Association of Electricity Consumers for Reforms Inc (NASECORE) is already signaling that they will take that battle straight to the courts.

Is the DOE seriously assuming its Circular can override Supreme Court-sanctioned jurisprudence mandating CSPs for all power supply contracts—including those of coal, gas, and even the 20-year PSAs for RE capacities that had been awarded via green energy auctions (GEAs)?

When all is said and done, favoring a single technology invites legal challenges for anti-competitiveness under warranted procurement and energy laws. Such exemptions also risk eroding accountability while opening the door to political capture and rent-seeking.

Even the proposed regulatory asset base (RAB) for nuclear reeks of mismatch, since that framework is designed for regulated power utilities, not for power generation technologies that are operating in a deregulated market. Therefore, to any investor, that must raise serious questions about legal and economic legitimacy.

I don’t really get why the DOE feels the need to ‘over-pamper’ nuclear when that is a mature and highly-proven technology globally. It should stop ‘babying’ it and start being upfront with consumers about the costs and safety trade-offs linked to these installations—because setting aside the crushing upfront costs, this technology has major potential to stand on its own and thrive across decades.

The DOE could explore other ways to de-risk nuclear investments without handing one technology a free pass by skipping competitive bidding.

Conclusively, carving out nuclear from competitive bidding while every other generator plays by the rules jeopardizes true economics and efficiency, market fairness, investment confidence, as well as grid reliability by distorting the dispatch order.

Guarantee a market for nuclear and every other developer—those for solar, wind, gas peakers, and storage—will readily smell bias. That could rapidly weaken investor confidence when it comes to fairness and predictability of the policy and regulatory landscape of the Philippine energy market.

In fact, once an exemption precedent is set, every player in other technologies may also line up for the same favors; and that will be the start of the ultimate disintegration of a competitive market’s integrity.

Taking all facts into account, treating nuclear like a fragile child ignores the facts: that’s a grown-up technology with steep capital outlay and critical safety issues; and the Filipino public deserves nothing less than the unfiltered truth if they are to accept this technology in the nation’s energy future.