The daily Nation has breaking news:
France to help Kenya on nuclear plan
It is a great ambition for a country that has yet to develop a decent national electricity grid. But Kenya’s PM and former Minister of Energy is an ambitious man. It is not the first time that the subject has been broached, and it emerges that Kenya has been courting western partners for more than a year:
1 billion USD translates into 73-75 billion Kenya shillings, and it is not unusual in Kenya that the initial costs of a project are drastically revised upwards after inception. In this case, Kenya’s own lack of knowledge on the subject would make such a project a blank cheque for the experts.
Common people like me have a hard time visualising a landscape dotted with high-security nuclear facilites, white plumes of steam rising out of cooling towers, and gleaming pylons joined by wires buzzing with power. I have not even set eyes on such a facility here in Europe!
Why should France pick Kenya, of all other possible candidates, to be the recipient of this “assistance”?
Some digging reveals that this is part of a French-Britain (Brown- Sarkozy) pact to bring nuclear energy to the world.
The Guardian, 22-3.2008: Britain and France to take nuclear power to the world 
It surely cannot be because we have exhausted all our options. I’m certain that it is not because our grid is complete and we have already connected every citizen but our generating capacity is unable to feed the needs of our population.
Nuclear power is not a joke. Those who experienced Chernobyl know that the risks of plant failure are very high. In fact, such is the scare that Chernobyl caused, that some countries in Western Europe are busy decommissioning nuclear power plants, except…..France.
Frequently, we see harrowing pictures of the charred remains of Kenyans who swarm around an overturned petrol tanker, collecting the volatile stuff, until somone lights a cigarette or shorts the battery, incinerating all in the vicinity in a exploding fireball. Would a people so poorly informed about the dangers of petroleum understand the danger inherent in barrels of radiocative waste?
I hope that France is not serious about setting up anything nuclear in Kenya, because they have not solved their own nuclear riddles adequately to be exporting their technology to a third-world country.
According to Greenpeace, there are tons of nuclear waste in France waiting to cause a disaster inside France, either through human error or as a result of sabotage by terrorists. Greenpeace goes on to question France’s claims of success in the nuclear field.
Greenpeace’s stance is not the only one. There are also people in the opposite camp who fully support the French nuclear programme and cite very favourable figures when compared to other sources.
Jerome Kos, Nuclear energy in France – a Sunday Special
One ommission in the pro-nuclear camp is the biggest question of nuclear energy: what do we do with the waste?
Solutions mentioned in pro-nuclear publications, including Jerome’s blog, are never definitive. They revolve around ‘parking’ or ‘hiding’ the waste until a day in the future when it can be processed. This is Greenpeace’s major gripe and it also negates whatever positive CO2 benefits nuclear energy boasts.
What if the French, under the guise of helping Kenya, exported their waste into our country?
Any well-informed person does not have to wrack their memory to recall the Mururoa Atoll. Despite opposition from her allies and inhabitants of the Polynesian Islands, the French went ahead and detonated nuclear devices repeatedly in the area.
Before we all get excited by our PM’s latest foreign conquest and the promises he brought with him, we should ask ourselves whether the nuclear option is viable in Kenya, and whether we have examined all other vailable options.
Are we really ready for the nuclear option and could we live with the scrutiny and distrust surrounding the Iranian nuclear programme? Could Kenya be able to provide the security and safeguards that are necessary in these days of terrorist threats and rogue nations seeking illicit supplies of weapons-grade nuclear material.
I hope that nobody takes our PM seriously in his flirt with plutonium, and he ought to be solving our problems using means that are easily within reach, such as the abundant sunshine!
