The Iran war is accelerating plans for Southeast Asia to go nuclear. Experts say it won’t be easy

The last time an energy crisis pushed Southeast Asia to consider nuclear energy, it led to a $2.2 billion plant in the Philippines that never got switched on.Half a century later, a new crisis is pressing the region to start thinking about nuclear again. Global oil and gas prices have surged since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. Southeast Asia, comprised mainly of net energy importers, has been hit especially hard by rising energy prices, accelerating plans to drive down energy usage. 

On March 23, Vietnam and Russia signed a deal to build a nuclear power plant in Vietnam’s Ninh Thuan province. The plant, set to come online in a decade, will be Southeast Asia’s first modern nuclear power plant. Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines have also signaled their intention to build nuclear capacity.

“Previously, the clean energy transition in the region was mainly driven by economic considerations—particularly the growing expectations from companies for access to low-carbon electricity,” Tan-Soo Jie Sheng, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore (NUS), tells Fortune. “However, geopolitical shocks like the Iran war bring the energy security dimension back into sharper focus.”

Southeast Asia’s previous attempt to go nuclear

The region’s first attempt at nuclear power, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, was built in the Philippines in........

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