Levelized Cost of Black Outs (LCBO) unbearable for businesses, families with loved ones in ICUs and neonatal incubators
For a country that prides itself for its distinction as the Silicon Savannah, black outs such as the one that plunged the whole country into darkness last seen elsewhere literally during the last Dark Ages, are not temporary sudden inconveniences. They are predictable disruptions of essential services that lead to irreversible and costly consequences like the death of loved ones who are hooked onto life support machines and in neonatal incubators in the hospitals. Blackouts stall work in factories contradicting every speech by politicians to audiences at funerals about 24-hour economies.
In a hyper connected world, black outs disrupt virtual presentations creating a bizarre situation where access to fossil fired diesel generators become a determinant of sorts for awarding of PhDs that have been pursued over years. Needless to say, a digital nomad computer science engineering consultant from Silicon Valley experiencing pitch darkness for the first time in his life while in Diani as the deadline to the submission of the critical code of a government funded regenerative Artificial Intelligence code elapses, is unlikely to risk ever experiencing the same again.
Diagnosing the root cause of this scourge that has plagued our society for decades is not rocket science. Coherent planning of grids is a long term endeavor bound to span multiple election cycles. However such consistency is practically impossible considering the focus in local politics is to exploit as many opportunities for mischief as possible. Surges in migration to towns not designed to accommodate such population growth has strained our ancient infrastructure like the decaying urban power grids leading to these debilitating blackouts that cost the country billions worth of economic activities and even more in reputation.
On the supply side, the frequency of occurrence of adverse weather events like droughts followed by El Nino will only increase as the effects of anthropogenic climate change affect hydroelectricity production. However keen to impress countries that burn coal for survival, we have vowed not to touch fossil fuels in a science fiction inspire 100% renewable energy mix that will not happen. ICUs powered by solar panels obviously cannot sustain life at night though without backup from expensive lithium batteries that may or may not spontaneously explode. The pungent release of sulphur dioxide that might cause acid rain hasn’t stopped us from derisking the 10 gigawatts of geothermal potential. We will however not dig any geothermal wells in Kilifi for the same reason why we will not build dams near Manyani.
The debating of The Energy Act 2019, a pro-Black Out document in the Kenyan Parliament that tries to label charcoal as “biomass” in pursuit of a 100% “renewable” energy mix has to be considered a joke.
This leaves the nuclear option.
Despite spanning barely 10 of the 3000-acre nature conservation park around it, Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant 20 km north of Cape Town, generates more than half the electricity the whole of Kenya produces. Duynefontein on the fence of Koeberg is a popular destination for visitors who want to see penguins and dolphins swimming in the Atlantic or the many protected species of birds and springbok that have been grazing in the shadows of Koeberg for decades now. This casts doubt if the “science” peddled along the coast about nuclear killing tourism is based on any reality.
The fictitious “30-kilometre radius free of human activities” is language meant to attract funding from organisations in countries like Sweden. Sweden actually plans to increase its share of nuclear power by building 10 additional reactors by 2045 at nuclear sites in Forsmark, Oskarshamn and Ringhals. Stockholm, the modern prosperous city with nature always a few minutes walk away thrives despite proximity to the now decommissioned R1 research reactor in Valhallavägen. Neither in Stockholm nor Cape Town is there any proof of the bizarre science taught by anti-nuclear experts at the coast that proximity to nuclear plants leads to the birth of deformed babies.
The fictitious “30-kilometre radius free of human activities” is language meant to attract funding from organisations in countries like Sweden. Sweden actually plans to increase its share of nuclear power by building 10 additional reactors by 2045 at nuclear sites in Forsmark, Oskarshamn and Ringhals. Stockholm, the modern prosperous city with nature always a few minutes walk away thrives despite proximity to the now decommissioned R1 research reactor in Valhallavägen.
Neither in Stockholm nor Cape Town is there any proof of the bizarre science taught by anti-nuclear experts at the coast that proximity to nuclear plants leads to the birth of deformed babies.Despite being targeted by artillery and missiles in the hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, all 6 reactors at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Plant have been safely shut down. Al-Shabaab militants lurking in Boni Forest are not more potent than the millitaries of the Russian Federation or Ukraine. Thus Pro-Blackout anti-Nuclear protests citing fictitious terror attacks on a nuclear plant not yet built indicate a lack of understanding of civil engineering.
It is not the 120 lives that have been lost since the accident at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 that makes it the deadliest ever electricity production related accident. The title belongs to the Banqiao Hydro disaster of 1975 where more than 100,000 people died. In fact, there was more loss of life during this year’s erratic rainy season in Nairobi alone than the total number from all the accidents at nuclear plants around the world combined.
The Western anti-nuclear dogma locals have copy pasted has origins in the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident of 1979 that, like Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, led to zero fatalities. Microsoft’s recent deal to restart TMI nuclear plant and Amazon Web Services commitment to purchase 480 MW from the Susquehanna nuclear plant for their data centers have the top banks in the world line up to finance them. State-run corporations like Russia’s Rosatom and Korea’s KHNP are building nuclear plants in record time in Egypt and the UAE respectively.
In this new nuclear renaissance, the people of Matsangoni no longer have to risk their lives in quarries and instead work at nuclear powered data centres. Kids will no longer have to do their homework under street lamps or while inhaling toxic fumes from “Koroboi” lamps that cause respiratory illnesses later in life.
Nuclear Power is a cheap, clean and safe. Pro-Blackout “Anti-nuclear activism” along the Kenyan Coast is not from a position of knowledge. “Nifunze Nuclear” should be the rallying call at their next protest.
Author: Chune E. Kihonji
Student of Civil Engineering at the University of Nairobi and a Nuclear Energy enthusiast.