Will Singapore build a nuclear power plant?

Singapore has made no final decision to deploy nuclear power, but since 2025 it has shifted from continued observation to actively studying deployment capability. Its 2012 Pre-Feasibility Study concluded that the buffer zone required for a 1,000 MW reactor would span the entire 730 km2 island; SMRs could shrink that exclusion radius to a few hundred metres. Singapore will host an IAEA Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) Phase 1 mission in 2027.

The starting point is geography. For an island state of 730 km2 with zero fossil fuel reserves, an accident that would be a national tragedy elsewhere would be an existential one here: there is no hinterland to evacuate to, and the margin for error is zero. That reality shaped Singapore's cautious, capability-first posture. The founding moment was the 2012 Pre-Feasibility Study on Nuclear Energy: after two years of analysis, the government concluded that the nuclear technologies then available were unsuitable for deployment in Singapore. The decisive constraint was the buffer zone — under prevailing safety standards, the exclusion zone for a 1,000 MW reactor would cover the whole island, leaving no point on the map where a conventional reactor could sit without endangering the entire population.

Singapore did not walk away, however. It recognised that even if it never built a plant, it needed the expertise to understand what its neighbours were building. In 2014 the Singapore Nuclear Research and Safety Initiative (SNRSI) was launched around three pillars: radiochemistry, to understand how radiation behaves in the environment; nuclear safety analysis, using computer simulation to model potential accidents at regional reactors; and safety and safeguards, training scientists able to work alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). By 2025 SNRSI had hosted thousands of secondary-school students, dissolving radiation myths with hard science.

Between 2025 and 2026 the policy posture visibly changed. In early 2025 Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced in the Budget statement that Singapore would study the potential for nuclear deployment, and commissioned Mott MacDonald to conduct a dedicated safety and technical feasibility study of advanced nuclear technologies. In October 2025 Singapore formally stated that it was seriously considering nuclear power, assembling an expert team and signing several nuclear cooperation agreements with the United States. In March 2026 the Energy Market Authority (EMA) signed an SMR memorandum of understanding with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP); in May 2026 it announced it would host an IAEA INIR Phase 1 mission in 2027; and in June 2026 it signed a partnership with the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to jointly build nuclear regulatory expertise. No final deployment decision has been taken: the goal of these steps is to accumulate enough technical and regulatory capability to make an informed one. Singapore's 2050 net-zero target explicitly lists advanced nuclear as a technology switch that may be needed.

The alternative route is importing nuclear electrons rather than hosting reactors. Vietnam has formally restarted its nuclear programme and Indonesia has put nuclear on its roadmap, targeting a first SMR plant in 2032. Singapore could co-develop plants with neighbours in less densely populated areas such as Kalimantan and import the power by submarine cable through the ASEAN Power Grid. That also means Singapore's real buffer zone now extends across the whole of ASEAN. Its defences include the Ambient Radiation Monitoring Network (ARMNet), commissioned in 2020 and run by the National Environment Agency, with 40 fixed stations and 5 mobile units against a stable baseline of 0.1 microsieverts per hour; a leadership role in the ASEAN Network of Regulatory Bodies on Atomic Energy (ASEANTOM) and its regional early-warning network linking more than 80 monitoring stations across Southeast Asia; and the legally binding ASEAN Protocol for Preparedness and Response to a Nuclear or Radiological Emergency, drafted with Singapore's participation, which mandates immediate notification of any transboundary release. Domestic response is built on shelter-in-place, with potassium iodide tablets held as a centrally controlled national security asset.

Even if Singapore never builds a reactor on Jurong Island, it has accepted one reality: it lives in a nuclear neighbourhood. In the atomic age, no island is truly an island.

This question is covered in depth in The Full Spectrum Every Energy Source Explained — A Singapore Perspective，第六章 6.SG