A nuclear plant, a windmill and a solar panel are at a party, and the nuclear plant is getting all the attention from the beautiful girls. Jealous, the windmill and solar panel ask nuclear power what his secret is. Naturally, the atomic power player says “Well, Mr. Windmill, you’re just spinning your wheels in place and blowing a lot of air getting nowhere, and you Mr. Solar Panel, you suck up all the light and your character is very flat. On the other hand, I am the bad boy every girl loves: I’m dangerous, I’m toxic to the core, I’m hard to handle, and my charm is radioactive.”
This joke would have been so funny, if not because the issues involved are so serious. I feel sad that after all that has been said and done about nuclear energy worldwide, my own President Goodluck Jonathan can make a complete about-turn and take steps to thrust a nuclear power plant on Nigeria. Around the world, enlightened people are already celebrating the imminent end of the nuclear age. In my country, we are begging Russia, the world’s leading merchant of deadly nuclear power plants, to come and build one in our very backyard. The news is both alarming and saddening.
Last week, President Goodluck Jonathan formally inaugurated Nigeria’s Atomic Energy Commission with a charge to the members to quickly evolve implementable plans and timelines for the delivery of atomic energy for so-called peaceful purposes in the country. He was reported to have said that generating power from atomic energy was very much part of the federal government's long-term plans for ensuring steady power supply in the country. And he promised the commission headed by passionate pro-nuclear pundit and activist, Erepamo Osaisai, that his administration would ensure that the commission receives adequate funding to carry out the task.
I recall that only a few months ago, President Jonathan’s own Minister of State for Power, Nuhu Waya, revealed that our government had foreclosed any plans to explore nuclear energy as an alternative source of electricity power generation. Speaking in the wake of the Japanese earthquakes which triggered the highly dangerous meltdown of some of their nuclear power plants, the Minister revealed that Nigeria did not need to talk about nuclear power. According to him, the country was blessed with abundant capacity in other much safer energy sources such as hydro, thermal, wind and solar which have not been fully utilized.
It is obvious that powerful pro-nuclear pundits have won President Goodluck Jonathan to their side. The mere fact that a few Nigerians such as Dr. Erepamo Osaisai went abroad and earned Master’s and Doctorate degrees in nuclear engineering when the field was still fashionable in the 70s and 80s should not mean that they must drag the whole nation down this dangerous path of nuclear proliferation just because they want to put what they learned into practice. Most countries the world over, including Japan, are now actively seeking ways out of the nuclear and radioactive nightmare which their earlier mistaken rush into nuclear power generation has landed them. Rather than use their expert knowledge to guide us away from making these same mistakes, these experts are bent on railroading President Jonathan and all of us into dabbling into a dangerous venture that cannot end well for this nation.
In a related development in July this year, Nigeria’s Minister for Science and Technology who is also a well-known nuclear pundit, Professor Ita Okon Bassey Ewa had set the ball rolling by calling on the Russian Federation to immediately start the process of designing and implementing a nuclear power plant in Nigeria. I must confess that on the day this man was screened and confirmed by the Senate as a Minister of our Federal Republic I had the sinking feeling that this government was about to take the irrevocable leap into nuclear power generation.
My candid view is that in spite of the newly established commission dangling the prospect of generating 1,000MW of nuclear energy by 2017, with the hope of increasing this within ten years to 4,000MW by 2027, Nigerians must speak out with one voice against this nuclear misadventure. There are several compelling reasons for my stance.
Firstly, nuclear power plants are not a safe method of generating electricity in spite of the assurances of Nikolai Spassky, Director General of the Russian State Corporation which is set to earn a lot of money from Nigeria for designing, building and probably maintaining the nuclear power plant. Nuclear accidents do happen, with the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine as well as the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown being the two worst disasters ever. By 2005 there had been more than 6,000 reported cases of thyroid cancer among those exposed to the radiation from the Chernobyl explosion. Besides, residual radioactivity in the environment means human movement or activity must remain excluded from a large area surrounding the damaged plant for thousands of years to come. Nuclear power accidents are catastrophic with unimaginable consequences for humans, animals and vegetation alike.
Secondly, handling the nuclear waste which such a plant generates is costly and extremely dangerous. Spent or used nuclear fuel rods will remain hazardously radioactive for at least 10,000 years. They must be kept in sealed containers and continually cooled for all this time, if not they will heat up and a meltdown will lead to the same nuclear consequences as a power plant meltdown. What a price and burden to place on future generations of Nigerians for our nuclear stupidity of today! I can imagine my great, great, great, great, great, grandchildren (up to twenty generations) having to bear the burden of handling nuclear waste left behind by my generation – just because we were thirsty for ‘cheap’ electricity, and were too lazy to use safer alternatives that abound around us.
Thirdly, Nigeria’s reputation for corruption and ineptitude in managing government facilities gets me worried that President Goodluck Jonathan’s nuclear power plant venture will end up like our railways, airways, NEPA, Nitel and other failed government corporations of the past. The alarming thing is that when this nuclear power plant fails (which I know it will, given our antecedents), it will spill a lot of radioactivity that will send us all scurrying to other countries for safety. I cannot but totally agree with the observation of a fellow Nigerian resident in the USA, who observed that “we must pause as a nation and urgently review this dangerous program. The observation that as a nation we have not been able to harness the skills and discipline required for maintaining simple hydro-electric and thermal power generating plants is valid. It is extremely difficult to convince skeptical Nigerians that all of a sudden, we will be able to maintain and run nuclear power plants.”
With customers dwindling in other civilized parts of the world, nuclear power plant merchants must not be allowed to dump their dangerous and highly unpopular technology in Africa. If we cannot realize vision 20:2020 without nuclear energy, we definitely cannot realize it even with nuclear energy. President Jonathan and his nuclear pundits must hear our voices when we shout NIMBY! Nuclear energy, Not In My Backyard!
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