I love nuclear power but I wonder why Nigeria would rather choose a difficult path to generate power with nuclear energy by developing its own nuclear technology. I have been browsing through the Google Earth images of Nigeria and have barely found large expanses of land that do not have communities located within at least 50km from them.
These communities support large populations of people, cash crops, livestock and dwellings. I wonder where they plan to locate these nuclear power stations. The contamination created by the oil industry in the Niger delta region is nothing to write home about considering the large number of aquifers that are unable to produce clean drinking water in the area because they have being tainted with crude oil.
We cannot even properly handle the radioactive waste from x-ray machines and other low radiation producing equipment used in the medical and oil industry.In an article featured in the IAEA website "IAEA Helps Recover Stray Radioactive Sources in Nigeria" it says "..At the request of the Nigerian government, the IAEA deployed a team of nuclear safety experts to secure and transport several potentially hazardous radioactive sources in the country. Staff from the Agency´s Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology department (NEFW) traveled to several different locations within Nigeria to safely recover the radiological sources and ship them in transport containers for return to Canada or processing at a Nigerian waste facility..."
Why re-invent nuclear technology that could turn your country to a radioactive wasteland when you can buy one off the shelf that is safe, compact and cheaper according to Hyperion Technology. Some schools of thought may say look at what happened to your Chinese built satellite (NigComSat-1) that could could be lost soon.However with nuclear technology I writing about you have a sealed nuclear reactor that is encased in concrete and buried underground capable of generating electricity for 20,000 homes at the rate of N12 per watt according to this story in U.K guardian
I have blogged about this technology in the past and I wonder whether the Nigerian nuclear agency has even looked at such technology before going down the experimental nuclear joy-ride they plan to take Nigeria down to.
The Chinese Nuclear plant in Daya-Bay near Hong Kong uses French nuclear technology, and the Chinese are currently looking to import nuclear power generation technology from Japan, Canada, France, US, South Africa because these countries have more advanced nuclear technology than theirs according to this report
