Government looks to nuclear power

I beg to disagree most vehemently with your wrong and unfounded assertion that Nigeria has what it takes to deploy and develop nulear power.Yopu cannot manage simple power generating systems safely and you are running your mouth about nuclear power. Have you finally perfected your plans to set the whole country ablaze? Wonders will never end , particularly in the Nigerian setting. There are many and better ways of solving Nigeria's energy PROBLEM.You may want to start by summoning the courage to ask Obasanjo what he has to show for the $15 billion dolloars he spent in eight years of his presideny. Don't talk to me and Nigerians about nuclear power as the solution to Nigeria's power problem until Obasanjo explains himself and stops talking about witchhunting. Please, stop trying to justify nonsense in your bid to find another cow for the PDP to milk us to death and prety please.

please site the silos at katsina, and oturkpo...

The only reassurance I have of the country's safety is that no functioning plant will be completed and the possibility of it going critical will be reduced. Maybe the new 419 email will offer nuclear fuel.

please make that katsina, nembe, oturkpo and abeokuta.. ..because i know deep within me that someone has a couple of tokunbo nuclear plants to offload...a country that buys tokunbo helicopters (built in 1975) for its airforce wants to go nuclear...

Please, lets not emote on this: The big issue is not that of safety. Neither will nuclear plants set the country ablaze. They have a proven track record of safety, and Nigeria would be wise to invest in nuclear power plants. The problem is that the generation,distribution and supply of electricity needs to be turned over to the private sector. The government(s) regulate and collect revenues from consumption taxes and operating licenses etc. The success of the communications sector is evident and I am surprised that nearly a decade later we are still grappling with very low energy production. There is nothing to fear but fear itself!

The plan makes absolutely no sense. If nuclear fissions would add 1KMW to the national grid, then why not invest in Wind or Solar? And the plan is by 2030, 20 years in the future; South Africa has similar plans, but for about 20KMW increase. Mr. Mark may not be fully apprised of our power situation more than the Minister of Power.

nigerians, believe in ur country. lets be optimistic please. at least it's still better than doing nothing.

Nigeria is one of the countries in the world that would greatly benefit from a nuclear holocaust. SO i dont see any problem in the Nuclear plants. SOme one need to press that reset button on a nation gone awfully wrong. I think i'am starting to feel the radition.

As a design engineer for many engineering equipments (a receiver of an award of Doctor of Philosophy in Technology; a citizen of Nigeria, belonging to one of the Diaspora elements living in Finland, North Europe), I have worked in collaboration with SIEMENS, ABB and numerous electricity-companies for some years. Here in Finland, there are five nuclear power stations. Finland is one third the size of Nigeria, with a population of only five millions people. Are we again kidding ourselves? To make the nuclear issue appropriate for Nigeria settings, our scientists, engineers, designers, etc must be able to accomplish 98% related issues pertaining to nuclear technology, its implementation and maintenance. The whole announcement about this nuclear power station is another opportunity for those in power to enrich their pockets. So, foreign companies with their so-called expatriates will be building NUCLEAR power station for Nigeria. Even if they build it for us, who is going to maintain it? Again the maintenance will be empowered to these foreign expatriates? Now the fatal issue! Is Nigeria also going to build new accurately, stable and smart national grid, which will be maintain and monitor 24 hours a day? The answer must be yes. This new national grid will be the backbone, and on which other systems must rely upon. In our fictitious nuclear power station, all the generators coupled to the steam turbines are pouring the electricity into the national grid. Ooh, there is fault within the national grid, and the load/electricity on the system is cut off, then we are calling for another “Chernobyl”. In this scenario, within minutes there will great pressure built-up within the power plant’s system which can lead to disaster. Furthermore, we will expect other fossil and hydro power stations to be operating in parallel with this new national grid. This kind of operation must be correctly chosen and it requires additional synchronising equipment. Automatic synchronising is expensive and manual synchronising requires some skill.

If Nigeria needs Nuclear plants, it is not the present leadership in Nigeria that will provide it. Lets leave it for the next generation of Nigerian who must be disciplined, focus and have the fear of God in them, those who will be sincere and patriotic enough to move the nation forward, those whose Yes will be Yes and No will be No. God in His infinete mercy SHALL provide us this type of quality leadership, only time will tell. Lets keep praying. God bless Nigeria.

We can even generate more than 1000MW of electricity from small scale hydropower progamme. In 1995 I had tried to point out to some of our nigerian administrators sustainable concepts of hydro electric for national development for rural areas. None of the administrators was getting the facts right. Among these concepts are community/area based stand-alone electric projects, in the form of specifically small-scale and low-head hydropower turbines. This is one of impetuses for initial industrialisation of countries like Canada, Germany, Sweden, Finland, and etc. This can only be achieved by the utilisation of synchronous generators within the power systems. Synchronous generators are usually standalone units. They can be run in parallel with each other or with the grid, but they must be correctly chosen for this type of operation and have additional synchronising equipment. Automatic synchronising is expensive and manual synchronising requires some skill. We have many rivers (located in the south of the country) that we can annex to generate electricity for the development of the economy of the areas and allow rural communities to benefit from them. Summarily, even if Nigerian engineers and scientists (who are living abroad) design and fabricate these technological equipments; sadly to say, our Nigerian administrators are not interested. When equipments and projects are supposed to be implemented freely; with no bribery involved, nobody is interested.

The Government should go ahead and do what is best for the country let them not allow any body to change their mind on what is best for the country let them not talk and talk and at the end nothing will be done let them do something now. That will create employment for the youth.

Good one! let it not be so much talk without action.now it should be more work less talk.Nigerians needs to be briefed on the progress of the work so that we can know if we are making progress or not. the light issue must be addressed positively to ensure no more stories.

For once give them a break! if you cant do anything about it stop complaining. No one said you cannot aspire to hold office like these guys, and do the right thing. at least they have laid the right foundation.

Nigeria going Nuclear!!!, i now believe that the world would truly come to an end, of course in a nuclear holocaust originating from Nigeria. Good luck and Iya Adura to all of you still alive by 2030.

Is a nonsense plan better than no plan. I dnt have an answer to that one. One thing I'm sure of is we probably do not have the expertise on ground to manage this one. We probably dnt have the money either. The FG says it is too expensive to build new refineries, we are talking nuclear power plants here. We shouldnt site them in the south o, because if NIger Delta Militants or OPC become aggrieved then... Let's take it to the North, and pray nobody does a Boko Haram.

all that would kill these plan is to explain to nigerians that the smoke coming out of the nuclear plants would make them sterile.....nothing to it...

this govt is annoying ,myospic,ignorant and thoughtless this is a country where we cant manage our resources produce produce eletricity,or our refinaries are talking of building a nuclear power plant.the40 billion naira space nigasat i have not been accounted for.our oil indusrty is in trouble the 6th largest producer of oil donot have fuel to sell to its citizens .greedy,selfish,thievery leaders we have .they want to add another feather to their cap as the EZE GBUAGBUA THIEVES OF NIGERIA

If we cannot even refine our own oil or maintain refineries but have to export crude and inport petrol, what makes us think we can manage nuclear plants? It not that we don't have the intellectuals. But the greedy far outnumber the rational and sane in Nigeria. Somebody will sell the stainless steel clad hafnium control rods for scrap metal and we know what happens then - Chernobyl. Where will you put it? With those already upset in the south who will blow it up, or with boko haram in the north who will blow it up? The earlier comment was right. There will be several very expensive 'exploratory studies' that lead no where.

@ Alex Siron, From your narration it is convincing you know what you are talking about generating electric energy through nuclear power plants. But so long as you are a Nigerian living abroad, they may never listen to you. Already minds are set, how to squander the money to be set for the project has already been mapped out. They cannot go back, advisers would tell policy makers that nuclear power plants are the easiest things to manage in Zaria, and so on. Eventually, Espats in white skin shall come and do the turn-key construction with oil money, like in our refineries and Ajaokuta and other white elephant projects. Then the Expats shall turn around to ask for close to half of our annual national budget in order to keep the nuclear plant running.

This is why there should be no nuclear power in a country such as Nigeria: Because of all the comments above, because the dictator president is crooked, and because the people don't know that 1KMW is in fact 1GW, and 20KMW should indeed be called 20GW!!! This is why I say NO!

Chernobyl, is too far, what of Ajaokuta? Some spin doctors called consultants must have captured the soul of Aso Rock. What better place than Aso rock villa to be the site for the plant!!

Is not too late to wake up from our slumber.

@hans richter...hitler was a democratically elected president....who told you that our president is a dictator...who has been offering the bribes? halliburton, siemens and that other german company....when you want to have your say, become a nigerian citizen, and vote...if not...shut up...

Naija no fit run airline how much more nuclear factory. Arrant nonsense!!!

if mr mark is convinced, let us site the silos at makurdi, maidugri, katsina, sokoto, the centre of niger delta and the home of our nepa distict manager in ondo.

dear sir, let us have these nuclear power plants at the home towns of all the phcn chief executives. i am sure they must have a reason to sustain it, otherwise, they will have themselves to blame. that is if they are alive.

Stop talking about nuclear, normal electricity cannot be provided for the people, and now nuclear, are blacks inferior ?, God forbid.

TMM: Which foundation? Where is it? In a newspaper report. Each day, this country flares off 40,000 megawatts of gas feedstock in the Niger Delta. Because this happens only around the poorest of the poor of Nigeria, nobody really bothers about the devastating harm this causes to the social economy of the area, not realising that every one of us plus those unborn is the poorer for it. Now comes this 419 scheme built around nuclear plants. Does Senate President Mark realise that the countries that have nuclear plants are those that have clearly run out of fossil fuels as feedstock for their power plants and therefore NEED to exploit other sources of energy? So, here we are with enough natural gas (the cleanest of fuels) and more than enough water (the best economical renewable source) to take us well into the next century and we prefer to ignore them??!! Meanwhile, we have the effrontery to take the gas we have in abundance, borrow huge amounts of money, liquefy and export gas to Europe, Asia and North America to feed their own power plants. We prefer to export energy and earn cheap dollars that goes to repaying the silly loans we took or guaranteed while our people remain in darkness. Do our leaders understand that we cannot fulfill our destiny until we meet our domestic energy needs from our own natural resources? Do they realise the real power they can attain if they simply provide us with electricity 24 hours a day using our own natural gas and water? Do they realise that by exporting the energy we could generate to EVERY OTHER COUNTRY IN WEST AFRICA (we can do it very easily, believe me), we secure our foreign policy interests far better than we could if we exported the entire Nigerian military on ill-equipped peace enforcement or support operations? Instead of focusing on what we can do right now, somebody has sold this 419 scheme to our so-called leaders in Abuja. And, by the way, after seeing what is happening in Pakistan and Iran, which Western power will allow Nigeria (which, according to all their current intelligence estimates is still hovering near the status of economic and political failure) buy highly radioactive material and acquire nuclear technology? What on earth are these people thinking?

Does Nigeria really believe this is how easy to attain technology. Are we buying it; are developing it; are we spying to get it; definitely non of the above. We possess not one atom of sense to run Ajaokuta steel mill; not one atom of sense to dredge the Niger Delta; not one atom of sense to clean up the massive oil spills in the Delta; not one atom of sense to recondition our dillapitated infrastructures; not one atom of sense to to build better hospitals, so that Mallam Umaru does'nt have to shame the Nation by running to Saudi Arabia for health recovery. Low and behold, Nigeria contemplates going "NUCLEAR". We should remember what United States said about Nigeria, that it will cease to be a Nation in the next 20 years; the countdown is on.

Nice Abanikonda, as you describe the lack of atom sense, if the person proposing Nuclear can define what an atom is from secondary college chemistry, then the person can go ahead with NUCLEAR, we know in secondary chemistry we studied many years ago that an atom is the smallest indivisible particle that consists of nucleous and protons and electrons, possibly now an atom is divisible.

Housing for all by year 2000,Vision 2010,Vision 2020 now Nuclear plants,common denominator is that they are all pipe-dreams. Is our current source of energy not enough to provide power if adequate attention is paid develop and maintain them. Soon our leaders will dream of a project to land a Nigerian on Mars or Moon or even Pluto.

stop deceiving us with nuclear power,hydroelectric power is not provided in the country for all Nigerians. now you are talking about nuclear, please stop deceiving yourself Mr senate president, we all know you dont care to perfect your whole country ablaze. we keep our eyes open to see on 31 December 2009 whether the minister of power, will fulfill his promise or not.

nigeria nuclear power a mirage.

CAN WE DO IT WITHOUT CARELESSNESS

I am working on the prospect of nuclear power general in Nigeria one thing that i knw is that nuclear power is the only realible nd sustanble source even with the global campain against burning of fossile fuel dt emit carbondioxide