Heading for a nuclear Nigeria

Nuclear Nigeria

Last week Nigeria received some encouraging news from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding its nuclear power vision.

The IAEA has given its full support to the nation's nuclear ambitions after the Nigerian government announced plans to build a nuclear power plant to meet its growing energy needs.

The Lagos based Vanguard newspaper reported on Friday that the agency position was conveyed by the representative of the director-general of IAEA, Vincent Nkong-Njock, who spoke at the presentation of the Strategic Plan for the Implementation of the National Nuclear Power Program in Abuja.

Nigeria have long had ambitious nuclear energy plans, despite boasting Africa's largest oil reserves.

"Nuclear power for power generation"

In 2007 the then new Nigerian leader, Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, who came into office in late May that year, called for the country to "develop the capacity to utilize nuclear power for power generation" in hopes of one day alleviating Nigeria's chronic shortfalls in electricity production.

And that wasn't the first time a Nigerian leader has endorsed the controversial energy source. In August 2006 August Obasanjo, Yar'Adua predecessor, said Nigeria had already marked "day one in the timeline of our nuclear electricity program," pledging to open a nuclear power plant in the next 12 years in an effort to meet the country's growing energy needs.

Ever since making its nuclear plans public Nigerian authorities have been eager to reassure the international community that the program would be dedicated solely to the use of peaceful nuclear technology.

However, bringing nuclear power to Nigeria isn't going to be simple. The country faces many obstacles, according to Jon Wolfsthal, a non-proliferation fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington.

"Primitive energy infrastructures"

"Countries with primitive energy infrastructures (like Nigeria) have a long way to go towards having a productive nuclear power generator," Wolfsthal told United Press International.

Nigeria's power grid is still considered primitive by international standards and needs upgrading in order to become compatible with a nuclear energy source.

"When you build a nuclear power plant, you have to have something to hook it up to," he said.

Last week Nkong-Njock said the development of an appropriate infrastructure to sustain the introduction of nuclear power is an issue of primal importance and should be painstakingly developed, exercising the necessary caution.

"This entails the provision of the necessary resources including human, financial and logistic, to create the appropriate technological, economic and social conditions that will adequately support the establishment of sustainable national infrastructure able to absorb a nuclear power plant," he said.

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