Indonesia leads race to build SMRs in Southeast Asia

The Philippines and Thailand are also pushing the tech but they haven’t made much progress.

Indonesia is expected to deploy the first small modular reactor (SMR) in Southeast Asia in as early as 2030, according to an energy analyst, as part of its plan to meet its climate and energy security goals.

The region’s most populous nation has had more progress than its peers, which are grappling with strict regulations and public opposition to nuclear power, Attaurrahman Ojindaram Saibasan, a senior power analyst at GlobalData Plc, told Asian Power.

Indonesia has fast-tracked its development target for nuclear power plants to 2029 from 2032. The National Energy Council has also identified 29 sites that could accommodate these facilities. 

Once these start operating, Indonesia can generate 45 to 54 gigawatts (GW) of nuclear power, boosting its generation capacity that was 86% fossil fuels as of 2023, according to data from British global energy think tank Ember.

ThorCon PT Indonesia, the local unit of US-based ThorCon, has announced plans to build Indonesia's first nuclear power plant in Bangka-Belitung province. It will have a capacity of 500 megawatts (MW) and start operations by 2032.

State-owned electricity company PT PLN is also working with the US and Japan to develop SMRs with a capacity of less than 300 MW, making them a good fit for Indonesia's many islands and remote areas.

Aside from Indonesia, Saibasan said the Philippines and Thailand are also pushing SMR deployment, though these are still plans and there hasn’t been much progress.

“The Philippines has a very advanced nuclear development plan, and they have already identified American suppliers as their potential suppliers for SMR,” he said, noting that Manila targets 1.2 GW from nuclear power using SMR by 2032.

Thailand aims to develop two SMRs with a capacity of 300 MW each under its draft power development plan.

Saibasan said the dynamics have changed in the past five years after the fear instilled by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. Southeast Asian countries are now looking at SMRs to help meet their energy needs. 

There are even states, such as Singapore, that have signed the 123 Agreement with the US to deepen cooperation on advanced nuclear energy technologies, including SMRs.

Saibasan said prefabricated SMR units could be manufactured, transported and installed on-site, making them more cost-effective to build than large power reactors.

SMRs also need less fuel, which means power plants using them can be refuelled less frequently — every three to seven years as opposed to one to two years for conventional plants. Some SMRs are even engineered to operate for as long as 30 years without refuelling.

Commissioning SMRs typically takes five to six years, mainly due to regulatory approvals rather than the deployment schedule. In contrast, conventional nuclear power plants need eight to nine years, Saibasan said.

“Southeast Asia has a lot of [nuclear] potential, but they haven't been able to tap it mostly because of regulatory issues and opposition from the public,” he said.

Countries that don’t have the financial capacity have had to tap capital from developed countries to start project development, the analyst said. The push for renewable energy, particularly solar, also creates competition for SMRs, as nuclear energy continues to face public resistance, he added.