“Officials with Kenya’s Nuclear Power and Energy Agency (NuPEA) said the country is on track to start construction on its first nuclear power plant by 2027. The group at a parliamentary hearing this month said the facility would begin generating power by 2034,” reports Power Magazine:
Kenya’s move is the latest by an African nation as more countries on the continent consider building nuclear power stations to supply electricity amid burgeoning demand for power. Rwanda last year signed a deal with Canada’s Dual Fluid Energy for a test reactor that would use liquid fuel and lead coolant, resulting in less radioactive waste, the Rwanda Atomic Energy Board said in a statement at that time. Officials said the country has a goal of at least 1 GW of nuclear power generation by 2031…..the proposed plant would be built in Kilifi County, a region known for its beaches and dense mangrove forests, and one of the country’s top tourist destinations….The 1,860-MW Koeberg plant near Cape Town in South Africa is the only operating nuclear power plant on the African continent. Russia’s state-owned Rosatom nuclear group is building the four-unit El Dabaa power station in Egypt, with the first of four VVER-1200 reactors expected to enter operation in 2026. Government officials in Uganda last week said that country is pursuing plans to build an 8.4 GW nuclear power station in the eastern Buyende District.
Some countries rely heavily on nuclear power, while others don’t. Nuclear power plants produce only around 20% of the electricity generated in America. But nuclear plants produce most of the electricity generated in countries like France and Slovakia.
In the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission makes it very expensive to construct a nuclear plant — even the application process is incredibly expensive and usually takes years of unnecessary delay. Even when nuclear plants are already operating safely and providing badly needed power, anti-nuclear activists sometimes get government officials to shut them down. Recently, however, the NRC approved the construction of a nuclear plant with an innovative design and a non-water cooled reactor.
Even as the cost of constructing a nuclear power plant skyrocketed in America, the cost fell in South Korea. As Vox explains, “construction costs fell 50 percent between 1971 and 2008 as South Korea built 28 reactors in all.” Nuclear power provides about 30% of South Korea’s energy, a higher fraction than in the U.S.
A recent study found that nuclear power is better for the environment than wind energy, solar power, or fossil fuels. Yet green activists in places like Germany have still forced the closure of nuclear power plants, making Germany more reliant on coal for energy. And they have done so even though “every major study, including a recent one by the British medical journal Lancet, finds the same thing: nuclear is the safest way to make reliable electricity,” says a long-time environment activist. “Solar panels require 17 times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create over 200 times more waste,” such as “dust from toxic heavy metals including lead, cadmium, and chromium.” Unlike wind farms, nuclear power plants don’t kill birds. And “wind turbines, surprisingly, kill more people than nuclear plants.” “Nuclear power is the safest form of energy we have, if you consider deaths per megawatt of energy produced,” notes Yale University professor Steven Novella.
