The government is checking on the mothballed Bataan nuclear power plant (BNPP) as it considers using the facility to help improve the country’s energy mix, according to Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi.

In a briefing, Cusi said a team would be sent to inspect the BNPP on Thursday “to determine its present status.”

He said the development of nuclear energy in the Philippines had been stifled for so many decades with “half-truths that are high on political innuendos but lacking in scientific basis.”

Cusi said such “fear of the unknown” had resulted in lost opportunity for the country.

The energy chief said he would revive an interagency core group for nuclear energy—composed of the Department of Energy, Department of Science and Technology and National Power Corp.—that was organized to evaluate the BNPP during the power crisis of the 1990s.