Uranium is not a toy.

I had an interesting conversation with an old friend of mine months ago on power generation in Nigeria aka PHCN( Power Holding Company of Nigeria) palava. We had a  discussion on the way Nigeria generates power to crude oil consumption and cost of generating electricity for offices and home. During this conversation he mentioned something very interesting. He told me with all confidence that Nigeria is seriously looking into using nuclear energy to generate electricity.  " Is this a joke, do you understand what it means to have a nuclear power station"? I replied. " Lara, I am very serious, very soon Nigeria would have it own nuclear power station ".He replied looking serious. And all I did was laugh...very hard. A nuclear power plant in Nigeria...are we ready for it?

Nuclear power or energy generates heat and electricity  via exothermal nuclear processes : nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion. The generation of nuclear energy is done in nuclear power plants and the reactor core used is uranium. The splitting of uranium atoms (nuclear fission) generates nuclear energy. The heat generated during this process is removed from the reactor core using a cooling system which uses the heat to generates steam that runs the steam turbines connected a generator and generates electricity.  The use of nuclear energy is encouraged by many environmentalists because it generates a large amount of electricity and its process  does not pollute the environment. This very good because it does not cause any change in climate which result in global warming. However,  radioactive waste generated during the process emits radiation which makes its dangerous to the environment and humans. Nuclear power may solve the electricity challenge in Nigeria but i do not believe Nigerian government can handle all that comes with it. 

After the conversation, I felt that I didn't believe in Nigeria enough and I was being a pessimist, so I decided to ask another friend of mine who works in the power industry in Nigeria.  This was what he had to say:

  

1   1. The maintenance culture in Nigeria is extremely poor especially if it's a government owned facility (you can correct me if I am wrong). Our oil refineries speak for itself on the level of maintenance that is done which is zero.  If we cannot take care of what we already have here on ground, how would we take care of the new facility that would be added?

2.    Politricks is too much in Nigeria thus the construction of a nuclear power plant in Nigeria might not be done up to standard. Why? It is simply because too many handshakes would have collected the more than half of the capital needed to the job.

3.    Nigeria's disaster management has not yet hit the bar in my opinion. Nuclear accidents that occurred in Three mile island ( US), Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Fukushima (Japan) are good examples of how well maintained nuclear power plants can fail. How much more one that is not maintained?

Do you agree with this line of reasoning? Is nuclear energy possible in Nigeria? Do you believe things can change and get better as per our maintenance culture? Does politricks really ruin development?

I would love to hear your opinions on this issue, do drop your comments and remember..give a hoot do not pollute. Have a wonderful week ahead and a big congratulations to the German machines.