Atoms for Africa (James Conca, Forbes) Africa USofA

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Atoms for Africa James Conca, Contributor to Forbes May 25, 2018

After Martin23230 Africa has 1.2 billion people in 54 countries living on 12 million square miles. The economies of these countries are hobbled by a general dearth of energy that nuclear could solve.

NOTE: Before nuclear power is used in many countries, fossil fuels should help them as they did North America and Europe to develop functional democracies, stable economies, good education systems and respect for the environment. Fossil fuels are much simpler to use. Nuclear power should not be deployed in countries with unstable governments, struggling economies, warring factions, poor education systems, and leaders primarily interested in enriching themselves at the expense of all others.

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Before nuclear advocates suggest that the United States offer services to build nuclear power plants and train managers and staff, America must get its own act together to have a functional regulatory agency open to development of nuclear technologies appropriate for Africa, to have capable nuclear reactor system suppliers and architect – engineer companies for construction management that will hold to budgets and schedules.

The organization, Nuclear Africa, has excellent leadership and should have a lead role.

Environmentalists for Nuclear- USA presents many articles about all sides of the man-made global warming topic so our readers can form their own opinion with balanced input. We are of the opinion that there are many more reasons to develop nuclear energy around the world than man-made climate change and man-made climate disruption as John Holdren and his colleagues now call it. We are also of the opinion that no one should advocate for development of nuclear power at a pace much faster than what is practically possible. We should not encourage nuclear power in countries that cannot use nuclear power with the same respect and skills shown by France, Canada, South Korea and other countries.

The situation with nuclear reactor suppliers and architect – engineer companies is as follows: 1) China, Russia and South Korea have the most recently completed and new orders to build nuclear power plants. Their ability to expand nuclear power around is the best available, but still very limited for significant global expansion.

2) France has a very good system for licensing, building and operating nuclear power plants. But it has not built many new plants in decades.

3) The United States has all but given up the business of building new large light water reactor plants and is painfully slow going through the process to license other nuclear technologies applicable to Africa.

The USA is nothing like the country it was in the 1950s, 60s and 70s with regards to nuclear power. This is mainly due to anti-nuclear groups, politicians who go along with anti-nuclear groups for their votes and a Nuclear Regulatory Commission that has made it a lot more complex and costly to license new construction than back in the early 1970s.

The above text in bold is the opinion of John Shanahan, Environmentalists for Nuclear – USA.

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The Center for Global Development recently published a new report, Atoms for Africa, discussing how there is more interest in nuclear energy among African countries than the rest of the world realizes.

Co-authored by Jessica Lovering, Director of Energy at the Breakthrough Institute, and three Fellows - Abigail Sah, Omaro Maseli, and Aishwarya Saxena – the report outlines how new nuclear technologies can accelerate deployment and solve fears like meltdowns and weapons proliferation.

But without U.S. and international financial support for nuclear projects on that continent, African governments will be forced to partner with Russia and China.

China is investing billions in Africa, mostly in traditional infrastructure like roads, rail and ports, and is now the continent’s biggest trading partner. China is developing a variety of nuclear reactors, small and large, that can be tailor-made for applications across Africa.

Their latest initiative, called the ‘One Belt, One Road’ project is China’s ambitious plan to pass America in global political and economic influence, basically a 21st century version of the 2,000-year-old Silk Road. And they are succeeding.

Africa has 1.2 billion people in 54 countries living on 12 million square miles. The economies of these countries are hobbled by a general dearth of energy. Poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, inadequate water supply and sanitation, as well as poor health, affect a large proportion of the people who reside on the African continent, especially sub-Saharan.

The United Nations has quantified the effects of having, or not having, access to sufficient energy, called the Human Development Index. It tracks the close relationship between per capita energy use and quality of life (see figure). According to the HDI, humans need about 3,000 kilowatt hours per year per person to have what we consider a good life. Americans average 12,000 kWhs/yr, but 70 percent of the world’s 7.5 billion people are well below 3,000 kWhs/yr.

Access to energy is essential to quality of life. It takes about 3,000 kWhs/person/year to have what we consider a good life. Above 0.9 on the U.N. Human Development Index (HDI) means a good life. Below 0.6 HDI is bad. 70% of the world’s population of 7.5 billion people is below 0.8 on the HDI. If we move everyone in the world below 0.8 up into the region between 3,000 to 6,000 kWhs per year, and move us energy fat cats down to 6,000, it will take only 35 trillion kWhs per year to eradicate global poverty.

The big question is how to do that without trashing the environment.

If we move everyone in the world who is below 0.8 HDI up into the region between 3,000 to 6,000 kWhs per year, and move us energy fat cats down to 6,000, it will take about 35 trillion kWhs per year to eradicate global poverty. That will be hard to do without ramping up nuclear.

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NOTE: Who are the “we” who are going to “move” 70% of the world below 0.8 on the Human Development Index up to that number and the “American energy fat cats” down from 12,000 to 6,000 kWhs per year? Are they democratically elected officials or a very few self appointed groups claiming they will save the world without Democracy?

According to the International Energy Agency, 625 million people in Africa do not have access to electricity, while another estimated 730 million Africans use dirty and potentially hazardous fuels to cook, mostly inappropriate solid biomass. The average per capita residential electricity consumption is less than 350 kWh per year, placing them below 0.5 on the HDI. Despite having a population almost twenty times larger, the 48 sub-Saharan countries generate about the same amount of power as Spain, a mere 83 GW of total gridconnected generation capacity, with South Africa alone accounting for more than half of that. Not surprisingly, South Africa is the only country in Africa with a commercial nuclear power plant.

The reality of energy poverty poses a particularly thorny paradox for those who also care about the climate and the environment. On the one hand, most believe in helping the world’s poor. On the other hand, moving billions of people into the middle class in the coming decades, without a realistic plan for ramping up non-carbon energy sources, will mean a drastic rise in fossil fuel use since fossil fuels are still the most plentiful source of energy on the planet.

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Almost 90% of the energy currently used in developing countries comes from coal, oil and gas. Keep in mind that coal is the easiest power plant to build in a poor country with little existing infrastructure. It’s not the best. It’s not the cheapest. It’s just the easiest.

Without fundamental changes in how the world produces energy, global use of fossil fuels will effectively double by 2040. This process has already played out in China, where six hundred million people were lifted out of poverty in less than twenty years—a development that has coincided with China’s emergence as the world’s biggest carbon emitter.

The single most important issue at COP21, and every climate meeting since 1990, is how to give these people energy without giving them coal.

Enter next generation nuclear power. Nuclear has the greatest potential to provide a clean baseload of energy, minimizing carbon emissions while simultaneously alleviating energy poverty. Significant challenges remain, like high capital cost, long timelines, weak institutions, and proliferation concerns.

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But leading climate change experts, including Jim Hansen and other top researchers, have warned that we cannot accomplish any of our climate goals without a significant boost in nuclear energy. So we have to figure out how to do this. And soon.

There is reason for optimism. As the Center for Global Development enumerates, small modular reactors (SMRs) and advanced nuclear technologies could improve the feasibility of developing commercial nuclear power in African countries. With new designs, African countries can leapfrog over the large-scale, traditional light-water nuclear technologies to nuclear reactors that are smaller, modular, more flexible, easier to finance, construct, and operate, and overall more appropriate to Africa’s needs.

Africa also has plentiful natural supplies of uranium.

In 2015, representatives from Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tunisia and Uganda began preliminary plans to set up the Enhancing Nuclear Power Programme Development, aimed at strengthening and building capacity across the African continent for the planning, development, and management of nuclear power infrastructure and programs.

As Suzy Baker from Third Way points out, without early engagement from the United States' nuclear industry in Africa, we will miss out on strategic partnerships in these countries that could last decades. The United States needs a lot more than a bi-lateral agreement to compete with Russia, South Korea, and China on international nuclear bids.

We will also need support with export control and financing, but we need commercial advanced nuclear products that meet the changing needs of new markets. That will require a host of innovation policies that we've seen work in other sectors.

The Atoms for Africa report goes through the continent country by country, subject by subject, reactor design by reactor design, strategy by strategy, to lay out a logical discussion of how nuclear could alleviate some of the worst problems in the most energy-poor region of the world.

It is well worth the read.

Dr. James Conca is an expert on energy, nuclear and dirty bombs, a planetary geologist, and a professional speaker. Follow him on Twitter @jimconca and see his book at Amazon.com

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Natural beauty in Africa

A friend of Steven Lyazi in Uganda making beautiful music.

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Steven Lyazi (1993–2017), an outstanding advocate for a better Africa through access to fossil fuels, nuclear power and nuclear medicine. He lived in Kampala, Uganda, was dedicated to caring for his mother, and contributed articles to The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow in Washington D.C. and Environmentalists for Nuclear – USA in Denver. He worked with the Nuclear Africa Pty Ltd to have nuclear medicine in Uganda and was loved by people around the world. Most people involved in sounding the alarm about catastrophic man-made global warming from use of fossil fuels never bothered to get to know him. They focus on making the whole world to be as they want so their children can “reverse climate change.” Steven was killed in a tragic bus accident in 2017.

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