Africa's nuclear dreams a fusion of high hopes and high hurdles
Africa’s nuclear energy ambitions face significant challenges as experts question whether the continent’s infrastructure can support such a leap. Industry leaders from the US and Africa's nuclear energy sector are meeting in Nairobi this week to discuss how to move forward.
The four-day conference aims to address the obstacles hindering the adoption of nuclear energy on the continent.
While South Africa remains the only African nation with nuclear power plants, Kenya and Rwanda are eager to follow.
This summit is the second major convention on the issue, following a similar event in Accra, Ghana, in October-November 2023. That event was organised by the US Department of Energy in collaboration with the Nuclear Power Institute of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission.
Feasibility in question
Experts are questioning the feasibility of building nuclear power plants in Africa.
“There is a lot of talk about nuclear programmes in Africa, but these ideas are closer to fantasy than industrial reality,” said Mycle Schneider, project coordinator at the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR).
The first major obstacle, he told RFI, is the size of grids.
The International Atomic Energy Agency states that an average large nuclear reactor is around 1,000 megawatts (MW) or one gigawatt (GW). However, only four African countries have a grid larger than 10,000MW or 10GW – Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Nigeria. Most other African nations have much smaller grids.
Read more on RFI English
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