MORONG, the Philippines — On a steamy June afternoon, Jimmy Arquero, 65, took off his red cap, wiped his brow and hunkered down for some leafy shade in a concrete gutter in the middle of town. His blue eyes stared off into the distance, out of focus, and he faded for a brief moment into a daydream of how the last four decades could have been.

In that alternate timeline, the Philippines would have completed work on the nuclear power station he’d helped build in the 1980s, just a 20-minute drive northward. The single reactor at the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant would’ve become Southeast Asia’s first commercial atomic station, vaulting the fast-growing archipelago nation into the club of industrial powerhouses — Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — already powered by nuclear fission.

As a pipefitter in those early days, Arquero was making more than he’d ever earned. He might have gone on to work at a factory or a data center, or some other electricity-thirsty industry that would have been drawn to Bataan — particularly if, as had been planned, that first reactor had been followed by another, and maybe more. He might even have gotten air conditioning.

In reality, right as the plant was about to load its first uranium rods and as a generation of young operators finished their training, Filipinos ― with U.S. backing ― overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose government had overseen the project. A month later, the world’s worst and only mass-casualty nuclear power meltdown took place at the Chernobyl plant in Soviet Ukraine. The new democratically-elected government in Manila mothballed the Bataan plant. Arquero lost his job.

Instead, he did what his father and generations before him had done: Arquero farmed.

The land here, in this region on the north side of the Bay of Manila — a place whose name is most often associated with the Bataan Death March, during which Japanese troops slaughtered thousands of Allied prisoners of war — is too parched and mountainous for rice paddies. So he grew squash and melons. As a pipefitter, Arquero made the equivalent of over $420 per day. These days, he said, he’s lucky to pull in $6.

This isn’t his father’s Philippines. It’s hotter. The droughts last longer. The produce grows smaller or withers on the vine. The insects are relentless. The pesticide costs more.

“It’s becoming harder and harder to grow,” Arquero said. “We’re harvesting less because there hasn’t been any rain for months.”

It’s also getting harder to stay cool. Like many here, Arquero can’t afford his own air conditioner. Even if he could, he said, using it would be too expensive. Mostly dependent on imported fossil fuels to run power plants, Filipinos pay among the highest electricity prices in Southeast Asia, and rates keep going up. With tuition bills coming due soon for his four kids, ages 15 to 23, he said he’s trapped in a cycle of debt.

“There’s no money,” Arquero said. “I borrow money from others. When my salary comes I pay them back, then I borrow again.”

The dizzying pull of a debt spiral is enough to make anyone lose themselves, at least briefly, in aching hindsight. What if things had gone the opposite way? What if the Philippines had completed and actually used Southeast Asia’s first nuclear plant?

Arquero might still find out.

The Rise of Nuclear Fear

As much as proponents of bringing Bataan online would like to rewind to 1986 — and even that feels possible with another Marcos, the democratically-elected “Bongbong,” in power — there’s no turning back the clock. The plant, weathered by the sea, has been sitting idle for 38 years, though it still receives nearly $1 million a year in basic maintenance.

But the planet’s literal and political heating-up over the past few years has thawed old fears of nuclear power. The Philippines is now racing against Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia to claim its place as the first in this region to join the 30-plus others around the world that use atomic energy. With only limited engagement from Washington, however, Manila has remained open to almost any country ready to help.

After passing two laws to boost nuclear power, the Philippine Congress is considering voting on another two pieces of legislation later this year aimed at setting up a modern atomic energy regulator and offering subsidies to developers. A handful of major U.S. reactor startups are already in talks with Filipino officials. Russian and Korean nuclear engineers have made visits to Bataan to assess whether or how quickly that plant could be revived. A new Korean delegation arrived in October. In December, a team from Canada paid a visit.

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