REKINDLING THE NUCLEAR POWER DEBATE
The envoy emphasised that: “Nigeria may not have adequate power until it builds nuclear power stations. It is the best thing for the country to have sufficient power supply. Nigeria has everything to progress, but the country’s current power situation is too low for developmental purposes.” One cannot agree more. As President Yar’Adua and the […]
The envoy emphasised that: “Nigeria may not have adequate power until it builds nuclear power stations. It is the best thing for the country to have sufficient power supply. Nigeria has everything to progress, but the country’s current power situation is too low for developmental purposes.”
One cannot agree more.
As President Yar’Adua and the country’s Power Sector continue the struggle to achieve the 6,000 MW target by December 2009 and 10,000 MW by 2011, one area where discussion and advocacy have not been robust is the nuclear power option. According to the Iranian envoy, nuclear power is the sure banker towards ameliorating our power deficit. And we should listen to him.
And it is not as if Nigeria is not thinking of the nuclear power option; it is, but as a long-term, future option. In its October 2009 report on Emerging Nuclear Energy Countries, the World Nuclear Association, an industry think-tank (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf102.html), says about Nigeria: “To address rapidly increasing base-load electricity demand, Nigeria has sought the support of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to develop plans for up to 4,000 MW of nuclear capacity by 2025. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and its …current grid-supplied capacity is 2600 MW.
“Early in 2008 the Minister of Science and Technology said that the government has reaffirmed its determination to initiate its nuclear energy program by approving a technical framework for it. This is to proceed through manpower and infrastructure development, power reactor design certification, regulatory and licensing approvals, construction and start-up. In mid-2008, the target was moved forward to having up to 5,000 MW of nuclear capacity by 2017.”
All of which is good. Except that 2025 is just too far for Nigerians to wait to get as sure-banker a relief in electricity as nuclear power. Even 2017 is way too far off for, according to all experts, if a country wants to start deploying nuclear power in, say, ten years, it must start the process ten years earlier. Meaning, if Nigeria wants to go nuclear by 2017, it should have started the process in earnest by 2007.
We may well recall that, a few months into his Presidency, President ‘Yar Adua told the nation that the power situation in the country ‘is very serious’. He said when receiving the House of Representatives Committee on Power and Steel who paid him a call on this serious matter. This was in 2007. Now it is 2009, and the matter only became more serious. Today, it is not only very serious; it is way beyond very serious. In fact, there is no English word yet invented to describe how bad the situation is.
To say the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, citizens of this country know that, by Allah, the President does not, cannot, realise just how very serious the power matter is. This is because, as a Governor for eight years, and President since May 29, 2007, his immunity against power failure has never been lifted, and it still subsists. As things stand at the moment, Nigerians are just waiting and watching on December 2009 and the 6,000 MW target. Much as they waited on late Chief Bola Ige’s ‘Power in Six Months’ proclamation ten years ago. Six is a common denominator.
Nuclear power generation is so simple, really. We learn from www.wikipedia.org that “nuclear power involves the controlled use of nuclear fission to release energy for propulsion, heat, and the generation of electricity. Nuclear energy is produced by a controlled nuclear chain reaction and creates heat—which is used to boil water, produce steam, and drive a steam turbine. The turbine can be used for mechanical work and also to generate electricity.”
The same source continues to say that: “As of 2004, nuclear power provided 6.5% of the world’s energy and 15.7% of the world’s electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for 57% of all nuclear generated electricity. The United States produces the most nuclear energy, with nuclear power providing 20% of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors—80% as of 2006. In the European Union as a whole, nuclear energy provides 30% of the electricity.”
As for safety, contrary to the beliefs of many, www.uic.com.au/neweconomics says “nuclear energy has benefits which can fall into two categories: national (price stability and security of energy supply) and global environmental (near-zero greenhouse gas emissions). Today, given the urgent environmental imperative of achieving a global clean-energy revolution, public policy has sound and urgent justification for placing a sizeable premium on clean technologies [such as nuclear power].”
Further, www.world-nuclear.org/education/intro.htm posits that “nuclear energy has distinct environmental advantages over fossil fuels, in that virtually all its wastes are contained and managed – nuclear power stations do not cause any pollution. The fuel for nuclear power is virtually unlimited, considering both geological and technological aspects. That is to say, there is plenty of uranium in the earth’s crust and furthermore, well-proven (but not yet fully economic) technology means that we can extract about 60 times as much energy from it as we do today. The safety record of nuclear energy is better than for any major industrial technology.”
Yes, nuclear plants do cost a bit to build, and they take ages to come on stream. But the only reason why nuclear power plants cost so much is because, in the capitalist West, expensive and sometimes unsustainable loans are taken with prohibitive interest rates to build them. To prove this, www.21stcenturysciencetech.com says “nuclear power plants that should have cost between $500 million and $1 billion had their final costs escalate several times up due to many reasons…”
A simple, modern nuclear power plant could be planned and constructed in four years or less (42 months for some). A simple plant, which may provide upwards of 1,000 MW, may be built for less than $1 billion. Therefore, with $10 billion (less than a quarter of our current $44 billion foreign reserves, according to the CBN’s latest statement), we could have 10 reactors providing 10,000 MW by 2014, if we start early 2010.
Now comes the question of management. Since we don’t trust local coaches with even our Super Eagles, we should never trust any local engineer with our nuclear power plants. We should just go ahead and employ foreign managers, especially Nigerians in the Diaspora savvy in nuclear and particle physics and other such high sounding esoteric sciences to come and man them.
And for where to situate the reactors? If we plan to build ten reactors of 1,000 MW each, each geopolitical zone should have one, and the remaining four situated around the Federal Capital Territory. That way, should there be any problem, it will have a Federal Character.