IS NIGERIA FINALLY CLOSE TO HAVING AN ADMINISTRATION THAT COULD PUSH THROUGH A SUCCESSFUL NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENDA?
With the recent presidential campaign kickoff, one will predict that each candidate just like their preceding party presidential hopefuls, will chip in the usual empty promise to salvage the power sector of the Nigerian economy. Without going too far back, it is instructive to observe that the power sector’s economic sinking ship had remained in its sinking position under President Obasanjo, President Yaradua (Late), President Jonathan, and now President Buhari. My research shows that there had been many attempts by these past and successive leaders to embrace nuclear power plants during their state visits to the United States after winning the presidency. In fact, the most serious attempt to acquire nuclear energy for Nigeria was made by some delegates that came here with President Jonathan when in April 2010, the then governor of Imo State, Ikedi Ohakim, signed an MOU with Barnett Holding Company of US to build two nuclear power plants in Imo state. The signing ceremony for the two nuclear power plants which were slated to be sited in Igbo land was witnessed by foreign and Nigerian nuclear experts including Professor. Babatunde Alegba, the Director of Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority. In a reaction to the news at the time, I vehemently opposed it and published some opposition articles in different news outlets with a follow up in America Mi Dream Magazine (a publication outfit owned by my late friend and prolific journalist Hon. Emma Okocha) when Buhari first visited the United States in August 2015. It is imperative that I continue to update my publications on this subject in order to discourage current presidential aspirants from wasting their energy and Nigeria’s resources in meeting and dinning with nuclear energy experts from the western world for the purpose of siting nuclear power plants in Nigeria. This advice, which is not limited to nuclear energy, extends to other alternative energy resources touted as clean energy and recommended to Nigeria in consideration of climate change solutions. At first glance, any clean energy resource will always appear to be a blessing to all countries but could in reality turn out to be a bad acquisition to some countries that have a good energy mix. Nigeria is one country that should first count its blessings and massively develop and utilize its abundant natural resources – natural gas, coal, water, biomass – before jumping on the climate change solution bandwagon.
Also, considering the global proliferation of nuclear power plants in about 31 countries and the past pronouncements from the Nigerian Energy and Power ministries regarding the nation’s intent to build many nuclear plants within this 2020s, it is imperative that the critical issues that usually trail nuclear power generation options are brought to the limelight. I do not wish Nigeria to acquire nuclear power plant anytime soon but if it eventually happens, Nigeria will add few more plants to about 55 nuclear plants currently under construction and to an estimated 450 operating plants worldwide. The usual timings of the declaration of the nation’s intent to acquire nuclear power plants by successive administrations, after participating in many international nuclear summits, are direct evidence that the nuclear option in question has international and Nigerian presidential or executive branch government backings. There is, however, an omission of the Nigerian public in the decision making process. It is also clear at this time, that the moves for nuclear plants have not included proper consultations of and national debates by the Nigerian citizens, technocrats and resourceful technological institutions other than few institutions in the likes of the Nigerian Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NNRA). If we are to make good technology decisions, avoid costly mistakes similar to environmental pollution, and protect generations to come, it is important for Nigeria to make well informed technological decisions. A good place to start is for our leaders to seek and encourage the input of the Nigerian people so that their input will assist those at the helm of decision making to understand certain implications of nuclear energy and act in the best interest of the nation and its people.
Nigeria has a specialized case whereby the critical issues of safety, costs, and available technological resources must be thoroughly evaluated to justify any nuclear option in the face of its abundant energy mix. The flaring of natural gas in Nigeria hardly justifies any acquisition of alternative energy- not to talk about massive acquisition of them. If employing nuclear or alternative energy, for example, will keep the natural gas flaring and polluting, it makes better safety and economic sense to fully exploit our natural resources by simply employing massive utilization of fossil fuels in the country. Nuclear energy, though environmentally safe, cannot escape the issues of public safety. And the fact remains that nuclear energy, though a critical mass electrical producing alternative to other energy systems, is known to fulfill only about ten to fifteen percent of the electrical power requirements of the countries that have employed it. Without first containing the gas flaring situation in Nigeria, the addition of nuclear energy will not bring much advantage, if any, over the existing energy mix. Rather, it would create conditions of continued environmentally unfriendly gas pollution and possible add-on nuclear related public safety problems. Therefore, with planned addition of nuclear energy to our energy mix and its obvious consequential safety issues, we should begin to ask those aspiring to occupy our government houses what they will do if by 4:30 A.M on a national holiday period, an aggrieved politician sent a gang of criminals with killer or kidnapping mentalities to seize a nuclear power plant and threaten to cause scientists at the site to compromise public safety. The same scenario may also play out with terrorists in areas with nuclear power plants. Aside from these scenarios, any nuclear power plant, public safety can be internally compromised by incidental and accidental occurrences as well as nuclear staff sabotage. Since public safety is at stake, there should be public acceptance now and not later. It is important for our decision makers to understand that public input is required in developing government safety standards capable of giving public confidence and acceptance of any nuclear option.
With the known potential safety risks, the nuclear power option for a developing country like Nigeria is a proposition that must be taken seriously. This is true when one considers the on-going economic waste of the nation’s useful energy resources and the fact that population increase coupled with rising Gross National Product (GNP) as reported few years ago, and expanding technology based businesses have all contributed, and will continue to contribute, to the increased rate of electrical consumption. The inability to checkmate the imbalance between electrical power supply and demand will continue to compound the problem in the face of continued population increase. The major factors in expanding electrical consumption in various sectors of the Nigerian economy are the oil wealth and technology development in many sectors of the economy that have for the past several years increased the overall GNP. In opposition to GNP is lack of strategic technology management and planning that in turn had resulted in technology waste presently characterized by thousands of poorly executed infrastructure projects and millions of inefficient power consuming electronic gadgets brought into the country via importation, travelers and Nigerian Diasporas stock. Other critical technology wastes are unutilized and underutilized human, natural, and institutional resources. Interestingly, as the world is progressively moving towards technology-based society, it is becoming clearer that the use of technology to extend our human capabilities and make our lives comfortable and fun is one of the true measures of techno-economic based happiness in any country as opposed to the non reliable social exercise or rating that once described Nigerians as the happiest people in this world. The goal of any nation is simply to balance wants and needs with the nation’s economic output by creating meaningful jobs and balancing technological systems – communication, electrical energy and power, manufactured and constructed goods, and biotechnology systems – to that of the demands of ever-increasing consumers. Techno-economic unbalance of wants and needs of the people is the root cause of economic instability and its associated insecurity in Nigeria.
NUCLEAR ENERGY VERSUS DISTRIBUTED POWER
The expected contributions of nuclear energy in meeting the needs of electrical consumers though very tempting must be weighed, economically and otherwise, against other more readily available and viable energy resources in the land. The question now is what are the usable and economical energy resources and supplies available to Nigeria? The obvious answers are water (hydro), oil, coal, biomass (wood) and natural gas. One of the first lessons for a student of global technology management is that the nations playing at the center stage of world economy became successful by harnessing the natural resources of their lands and effectively altering those from other lands. Despite known climate issues, America and Europe increased their dependence on the resources in their land in the last several years including considerable increase in the use of coal for power generation. Emphatically, Nigeria is a nation blessed with water, oil, biomass, coal, and natural gas. Ironically, these natural resources are being flared and wasted despite the fact that they all constitute proper avenues for substantial job creation for the teeming number of unemployed youths and adults. Therefore, in strict strategic technology management rationale, nuclear energy must be thoroughly weighed against other strategic options such as planned distributed utility with Nigeria’s existing energy mix. The alternative energy resources for electrical power generation that may be presently considered environmentally good and commercially useful but economically wasteful when manufactured outside the country, and in regard to Nigeria’s energy mix, are solar, wind, and nuclear. Acquisition of these options from other countries requires prudence and caution to ensure well planned incremental energy diversifications and job creation. On the other hand, their improper acquisition is capable of creating more poverty in the land. In the near or far future, Nigeria may diversify to incrementally embrace all the above alternative energy systems and others under research such as Fuel cell, Bio conversion and Ocean thermal energy.
While Nigeria is searching for long lasting electrical power solutions, it needs an attainable and a realistic vision as the first line of action in making serious attempts to solve the current power problems. The second line of action is strategy, strategy, and strategy. The strategies should be articulated on the premise of matching electrical demand and supply through strategic technology management of the nation’s energy and other technological resources. The design and development of the vision and strategies require presidential, legislative, and judicial actions. The past Presidential Task Force established to review the power issues in the country was not enough as it lacked permanency, strategic authority, and eventual bulwark protection. Follow up lines of action in seeking permanent solutions would be the simultaneous participation of government ministries, public and private institutional technological resources, and the citizens within and outside Nigeria. These ventures should be followed up with specialized energy education of the masses as a special project of the federal government with goals that include public energy consciousness, efficiency and conservation. In other words, with proper human and energy technological resources, energy mix diversification, utilization and distributed power, Nigeria will achieve power generation capacity increase equivalent to 10 % of existing generation without building a new power plant. Nigerians being generally well educated are well informed about other country’s nuclear plant problems and are also very conscious of their safety as such without public acceptance now, there will be public rejection in the future that may potentially result in negative reactions.
– Prof Away.
About the Author
Prof. Awa Uma is a technocrat currently teaching in New Jersey. He had taught college courses in Power Technology, Electricity, and EPIC Technology (Energy Power, Instrumentation and Control).
He studied Industrial Technology, Technology Education, Industrial Engineering, and Industrial Management. He gained and rejected an admission into the BGSU’s MBA program that lacked technical management curricular content after which he conceived the idea of the Technology Management Program while finishing graduate studies in the Department of Technology Systems at Bowling Grean State University (BGSU), Ohio. The department later embraced it, and Technology Management is now offered in many American universities.