Chapter Eight
Nuclear Aspirationals

WHAT QUICKLY EMERGES from available information is the uncertainty felt by many non-nuclear governments about the decision to commit themselves to nuclear power in the face of widespread international public scepticism. According to a poll conducted in June 2011 by Ipsos MORI, a leading British market-research company, 62 per cent of citizens in 24 countries were opposed to nuclear power. Only India, Poland, and the United States had majorities supporting it. The populations of China and Russia, and an increasing proportion of the French, were opposed, and the Germans were strongly opposed. Such polls are not very reliable, as opinions change over time. But with nuclear power, the change is likely to be towards increasing ambivalence and opposition.

On the pro side, many businesses and individuals anticipate sharply increasing demand for electricity as their economies expand and their living standards rise. Some are concerned about their own dwindling conventional energy resources, or those of their suppliers. Others have allowed themselves to be convinced by the claims of the international nuclear-power industry that to meet rising electricity consumption, nuclear power is the only path to take: that it is safe, reliable, and pollution-free, and the only energy source that can replace fossil fuels as a base-load alternative — a capacity that renewables such as hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal do not have. The claim that nuclear is safe was shaken by the catastrophe at Fukushima in March 2011; but, like real estate agents who claim property markets are expanding despite dismal auction results, international nuclear-power advocates are bent on putting a salesman’s most optimistic gloss on the industry.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) is the world’s foremost non-government nuclear lobby group. Its headquarters are in London, its director-general is John Ritch (former United States ambassador to United Nations organisations in Vienna), the chair of its board is Christopher Crane (president and CEO of Exelon), and its co-chair is Hans Blix (Director-General Emeritus of the International Atomic Energy Agency). A not-for-profit organisation, WNA’s members include companies involved in every aspect of the nuclear-fuel cycle, including mining, refining and enriching uranium, fabricating fuel rods, manufacturing nuclear plants, transporting nuclear materials, reprocessing spent fuel, and disposing of nuclear waste, all in the interests of generating electricity or producing neutrons for medical and industrial uses.

On 23 September 2011, the WNA updated a survey it had previously compiled on emerging nuclear countries. Although the earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan had occurred only six months before, the catastrophe at Fukushima was barely acknowledged in the update. It claimed that over 45 countries were actively considering nuclear-power programs. These ranged from sophisticated economies to developing nations. The full WNA list follows.

In Europe: Albania, Belarus, Croatia, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, and Turkey.

In the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

In Africa: Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda.

In South America: Chile, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

In Central and South Asia: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka.

In South-East Asia: Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The WNA’s frontrunners were Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Vietnam, Belarus, and Jordan.

However, by the time it was released, the survey was already out of date. Iran commissioned its first power reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf on that very day to provide electricity to Shiraz, making it the third nuclear installation in the Middle East (Israel has two so-called research reactors in the Negev Desert, at least one of which produces plutonium for the nuclear weapons it does not acknowledge having). The Bushehr plant is a Russian-designed 915 MW pressurised-water reactor, and replaces a German reactor, partially constructed by Kraftwerk Union before being destroyed in a raid by Iraqi aircraft during the 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War. In addition, Iran has uranium-enrichment plants at Natanz and Qom, and a heavy-water plant and several research centres widely scattered around the countryside, including at Arak, Isfahan, Karaj, Yazd, and Tehran. The Iranian program began under the Shah, with American assistance, in the 1950s. A monarch with a mission to revive Persia’s historical greatness, the Shah wanted 23 large (1000 MW) nuclear reactors built along the Persian Gulf. Driven by a fear of the Soviet Union, he would probably have developed nuclear weapons as well if the United States had let him. American, French, German, Israeli, and South African assistance for his civil program was freely available while the Shah remained in power, but dried up following his demise during the chaos of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Ironically, the revolution was triggered in part by the revelation of huge corruption involving the program.

Continuation of the Iranian nuclear program by the new Islamic revolutionary government was met with unrelenting hostility from the United States and Israel. Both countries (and, to a lesser extent, Britain and France) recklessly asserted that if Iran got the bomb it would immediately attack Israel with it. This claim was based at face value on Iran’s publicly expressed hostility towards Israel, but it ignored Iran’s basic instinct for national survival: any nuclear attack by Iran would immediately be met by an overwhelming Israeli (or American) nuclear response. Several UN Security Council resolutions suspended nuclear-equipment imports into Iran, and imposed sanctions and arms embargoes. But with occasional assistance from Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, China, and Venezuela, Iranian leaders persist with restoring and expanding their nuclear program. They already have a functioning enrichment plant, and 23 reactors remain in their vision. They might also have a nuclear-weapons program, although the leadership strenuously denies this. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors are suspicious (Iran remains a member of the organisation, and submits to regular inspections); but, as at the end of 2011, they have failed to find any concrete evidence for such a program.

In his 2011 book, The Age of Deception, former director-general of the IAEA Mohamed ElBaradei describes the US–Iran antagonism that has poisoned bilateral relations since the fall of the Shah. The Iranian sense of the United States as the Great Satan goes back to the overthrow of prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh by the CIA at the behest of the United Kingdom in 1953. The American perception of the Iranian regime as a gang of glassy-eyed radicals bent on Israel’s destruction goes back to the hostage crisis of 1979–1981. ElBaradei goes further and suggests, with some justification, that the Bush (and Obama) administrations manoeuvred themselves into a corner by patronisingly insisting that dialogue could only be a reward for good behaviour, rather than a tool to accomplish that behaviour, and that Washington had created a narrow approach to diplomacy: all principle and no pragmatism, all take and no give.

Although Western, particularly American, intelligence sources continue to hint darkly at hidden Iranian designs for a nuclear-weapons program, most of Iran’s Arab and Muslim neighbours are relaxed. Public opinion in Iran and across the region supports a civil nuclear program, even a weapons one. A view in many Arab countries, although one not shared by Sunni leaders of the Gulf States, is that Iran is surrounded by nuclear powers, including India, Pakistan, Israel, China, and Russia, as well as that of the United States Navy’s Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain; and that, despite the more provocative utterances of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is entitled to nuclear reactors and weapons. The purpose of the latter is widely perceived not as for a suicidal first strike against Israel, but as a deterrent against nuclear threats from any nuclear neighbour. It hardly needs adding that the Iranian government has not stopped its nuclear program following the catastrophe at Fukushima — there have been calls for some retrospective safety reviews perhaps, and some unexpressed concern about the location of the Bushehr reactor on three fault lines, but no announcement about abandoning its nuclear-power program.

The United Arab Emirates comprises seven hereditary monarchies joined in an Arab federation on the south-east corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Abu Dhabi is the largest by geographical area, and Dubai the largest in population. After many years of Portuguese and then British control, the federation was formed in 1971. Its Arab neighbours on the peninsula are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Oman. All have their origins in tribal Bedouin desert culture, and until the discovery of oil in 1958, the tribes largely subsisted on herding camels, harvesting dates, fishing, and pearling. They share a unique Khaleeji (Gulf) culture found nowhere else in Arabia.

As Gulf prosperity increased, so too did Gulf aspirations to develop nuclear power to replace dwindling oil reserves. In November 2007, an umbrella organisation, the Gulf Cooperation Council, completed a preliminary feasibility study for the introduction of a collective Gulf nuclear program. The problems were daunting. There were no physical or legal structures, no traditions of power sharing, no legislation governing nuclear power, no grid capable of handling the vast amounts of electricity generated by nuclear reactors, and not enough money to cover the vast economic and bureaucratic investment required. Several Gulf states nonetheless negotiated preliminary cooperation agreements for nuclear-power assistance with European and American nuclear interests. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia signed memoranda of understanding with the United States and Qatar; Kuwait, with the French company Électricité de France; and Oman, with Russia. By July 2009, the first stage of a power grid sufficiently robust to handle nuclear power had been completed between Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. Since Fukushima, at least one of these states, Kuwait, has had second thoughts about a nuclear program, and has cancelled plans to build four reactors.

In keeping with its predilection for skyscrapers, air-conditioned artificial ski slopes, race horses, Masters tennis tournaments, and desert safaris, the UAE was the first Gulf state to go beyond preliminary nuclear stages. On 14 September 2011, UAE Minister of Energy Mohammed bin Dha’en Al Hamili declared that the Emirates needed nuclear power, and that its strategy would not change because of the Fukushima disaster. Contenders for the contract included General Electric–Hitachi, a French consortium, and the Korean company KEPCO, in league with Samsung, Hyundai, Doosan Heavy Industries, and Westinghouse–Toshiba. KEPCO won the bid, and in December an AU$20.4 billion contract was signed for construction of four 1400 MW generation III advanced pressurised-water reactors on a turnkey basis, with an operating clause for Korean technicians over 20 years. The first reactor is expected to go online in 2017. It is unclear where the cooling water will come from, as Gulf water is too saline to use in existing reactor technology.

Fifty per cent of Turkey’s electricity comes from natural gas, 25 per cent from coal, and 25 per cent from hydropower. Growing dependence on Russian and Iranian natural gas to meet the energy needs of Turkey’s expanding economy has intensified the determination of the Turkish government to go nuclear. Like some other European governments, it envisages a future mix of fossil-fuelled, nuclear, and renewable energy. The two locations for nuclear-power complexes are Mersin, a port on the Mediterranean in the Akkuyu region, and Sinop, on the Black Sea. A construction program for the Mersin complex was signed in 2010 with the Russian group Rosatom. The Sinop contract is up for tender from international suppliers, including Japan. The first Mersin reactor will be a Russian-designed generation III 1200 MW advanced pressurised-water reactor.

Because of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, and the Fukushima meltdown in 2011, public reservations about the nuclear program grew. Demonstrators in Istanbul claimed that the Mersin site was too close to the notorious Ecemis seismic fault line; sea water from the Mediterranean was too warm to cool the reactors efficiently; having Rosatom build the reactors would make Turkey too dependent on Russia, which, along with Iran, already supplied the bulk of Turkey’s natural gas; and the Akkuyu region was a rich agricultural and tourist centre that would, like the Tōhoku region in Japan, be severely devastated by a nearby nuclear meltdown. These views were shared by leaders in Greece and Cyprus. The then Greek prime minister, George Papandreou, said that the nuclear option was not available to Greece because of its proneness to earthquakes, and should not be available to Turkey for the same reason. The Greek president, Karalos Papoulias, criticised the ‘irrational insistence’ of the Turkish government on building reactors in a highly active seismic zone, ‘endangering the safety of everyone in the Mediterranean region.’

In a response reminiscent of geologists in the pay of the Japanese nuclear-power industry, Professor Mustafa Erdik of the Istanbul-based Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, said, ‘It is possible, but with low probability [that an earthquake will occur near the plant]. I don’t think there will be any problem regarding the location and quake-design of the nuclear plant.’ Professor Erdik had last examined the Mersin site in 1987.

Ever since the United States constructed a research reactor near Da Lat in South Vietnam’s highlands, under its Atoms for Peace program in the 1950s, successive Vietnamese leaders have been attracted to nuclear power. Prompted by unexpectedly vigorous economic expansion during the 1990s and 2000s, Hanoi meticulously planned to introduce its first two power reactors by 2015, and to expand the fleet to eight by 2031. With its 500 kV power grid running the length of the country, by mid-2005, 95 per cent of the rural population had access to electricity. Two preliminary studies were carried out in the 1980s, followed by another in 1995, which envisaged the introduction of reactors in 2015, when the country’s anticipated energy demand would reach 100 billion kWh. Plans coalesced in October 2008, when Hanoi decided that two 1000 MW generation III reactors would be constructed in Phuoc Dinh, southern Ninh Thuan province. These would be followed by two more 1000 MW reactors in Vinh Hai, north of Ha Tinh province. A further four would be constructed to go online by 2031.

Despite being vulnerable to sea rises, fierce tropical storms, and tsunamis, Vietnam is determined to acquire nuclear-power reactors. Following the Fukushima disaster, the head of the Vietnam Atomic Energy Institute, Vuong Huu Tan, made soothing claims that Vietnam’s planned reactors would be safer than those in Japan: they would be third- rather than second-generation systems, with gravity pumps for emergency cooling, rather than those dependent on emergency power; safety would be a key factor in construction. Vietnamese reactors, he claimed, would be engineered to withstand anything the elements could throw at them — even a 20-metre tsunami of the kind that in the past arose in the Manila Trench and battered the narrow Vietnamese coast. Public reactions to Tan’s assurances were neither sought nor widely known.

The first two generation III reactors will be constructed at Phuoc Dinh on a turnkey basis by Russia’s Atomstroyexport. As is usual with Russian suppliers, enriched and fabricated fuel rods will be supplied by Russia, and spent nuclear fuel will go back to Russia for storage or reprocessing. As with subsequent reactors, the units will be owned by the state, through Vietnam Electricity. Potential suppliers for Vietnam’s other reactors include the Westinghouse–Toshiba consortium, EDF of France, Korea’s KEPCO, China’s Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, and a consortium of General Electric and Hitachi. In June 2010, nine months before the Fukushima accident, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency signed an agreement with the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety and Control for safeguards and security infrastructure.

Belarus became an independent republic after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Bordered by Russia to the north-east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Latvia and Lithuania to the north-west, large areas of the country’s forests and grazing lands were comprehensively irradiated during the 1986 nuclear accident at Chernobyl in neighbouring Ukraine. Despite the widespread local opposition to nuclear power that this engendered, Vladimir Putin came to Minsk on 15 March 2011 to sign a contract with President Alexander Lukashenko for an AU$9 billion nuclear-power complex, the country’s first. The Russian-designed reactors will be constructed with the assistance of an AU$6 billion Russian loan and the provision of enriched Russian uranium fuel; spent fuel rods will be returned to Russia at the end of their economically productive time in the reactors.

During his visit, Putin was at his most arrogant and insensitive. He ignored the fact that signing the nuclear contract was occurring only four days after the start of the nuclear crisis at Fukushima, claiming that Japanese nuclear reactors incorporated ‘old-fashioned’ American technology. Russian technology, he asserted, was several generations ahead (it is not), and he assured his audiences that heavy emphasis during construction on safety features would ensure that no major nuclear accident would ever occur in Belarus. Given the degree of secrecy and corruption surrounding the operations of Russian construction companies, this claim sounded particularly unconvincing. He also echoed claims by Belarusian political apparatchiks that the country was not subject to earthquakes, despite the fact that seismic records showed one as strong as the force-nine quake in Tōhoku had occurred in the area in 1909. Meanwhile, Lukashenko and Prime Minister Mikhail Myasnikovich began a campaign of intimidation against hundreds of anti-nuclear demonstrators in Minsk, who were brutalised by local police, and whose backgrounds were investigated along with more who had signed an anti-nuclear petition. At the same time, Russia’s first independent feature film about the Chernobyl disaster, Innocent Saturday, was withdrawn from screenings in cinemas across Russia and Belarus. And just as Greece and Cyprus reacted to Turkish plans to build reactors close to their borders, Latvia and Lithuania have expressed concerns about a reactor complex on Belarus’s northern border, only 45 kilometres east of Vilnius.

Jordan is a desert country that supports the power demand of its 6.3 million people by importing 95 per cent of its energy. For several years, King Abdullah and the Jordanian government have planned a nuclear-power program (as well as a nuclear-powered desalination plant) to reduce this dependency. To realise their nuclear ambitions, they have combed their way through the stalls of the international nuclear bazaar and negotiated cooperation agreements of one sort or another with a number of countries and firms eager to help them. These include Chinese mining interests, to help mine an estimated 80,000 to 130,000 tonnes of uranium held in Jordanian phosphate deposits; Atomic Energy Canada, to explore the possibility of constructing an enhanced CANDU reactor; and Russia’s Atomstroyexport and Areva–Mitsubishi, a French–Japanese consortium, as possible alternative reactor suppliers. South Korea has already got its foot in the door by lending Jordan AU$70 million to help build a 5 MW Korean research reactor worth AU$130 million. Giving support to Abdullah’s plans, the director-general of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, visited Amman in October 2011. He emphasised the need for the highest safety standards to apply to any Jordanian reactors, and listened to the king’s proposal for a Middle Eastern nuclear-weapons-free zone — something that few neighbours, especially Israel, are likely to support.

As in most countries planning to embark on nuclear programs, local opposition has grown in Jordan following the Fukushima meltdowns. Greenpeace Jordan has been active. So has Raouf Dabbas, an adviser to the Jordanian environment ministry, who cast doubt on Jordan’s technical ability to run reactors safely, especially given the country’s dryness, lack of cooling water, and susceptibility to earthquakes. A former environment minister, Khaled Irani, also expressed scepticism, asserting that a comprehensive environmental study had to be undertaken before any construction began at Mafraq, the preferred location for Jordan’s first reactors, 40 kilometres north of Amman. The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission has promised to hold a referendum.

We can range much further afield than the above six countries in our speculative game of which countries are likely to acquire nuclear reactors for the generation of electricity within the next 20 years. Like most of the six, Saudi Arabia has a low handicap in terms of controlling public opinion, and has the money and staying power to go the distance, especially if the United Arab Emirates proceed with their plans. But since the Arab Spring, another Middle East contender, Egypt, has been suddenly and unexpectedly inhibited by community concerns. Plans in Cairo for reactors were put on hold after Chernobyl, and delayed further after Fukushima. With the removal of president Hosni Mubarak, a proponent of nuclear power, the capacity to override local opposition was weakened. We can probably expect the country to abstain for the foreseeable future, despite persuasive salesmanship from reactor exporters, particularly Russia, France, and South Korea.

Another possible contender is Mongolia, which, despite Fukushima, asserts that it plans to build its first nuclear reactor by 2020. The reactor would be fuelled by uranium from Mongolian resources, for which the Mongolian government has negotiated a mining agreement with the French company Areva. Tsogtsaikhan Gombo, deputy chairman of the state-owned energy company Mon-Atom, estimates that total Mongolian uranium resources are in excess of 80,000 tonnes. His certainty about nuclear power in Mongolia must hearten the aspirations of reactor constructors contending for Mongolian business.

Excluding Vietnam (discussed earlier), South-East Asia represents the most fertile field for nuclear reactors among the rest of the world’s regions. With expanding economies and increasing demand for electric power, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and even Singapore and Brunei are all contenders, and potential nuclear suppliers are working hard and persuasively in their capitals to get contracts.

Indonesia, in particular, had well-advanced plans to construct four plants by 2025, with four possible locations in mind: at Muria Peninsula in Central Java, at Gorontalo in Sulawesi, and at Bangka and Belitung, two small islands that form their own province lying to the east off Sumatra. But since the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 drowned 230,000 people across 14 countries in South and South-East Asia — killing 168,000 and displacing 500,000 in 33 provinces in Indonesia alone — the Indonesians have become increasingly sensitive about the deadly effects of natural disasters. Many realise that, sitting at the intersection of the Indo-Australian Plate, the Eurasian Plate, and the Pacific Ocean floor, as they do, the 17,000 islands of the Indonesian archipelago are hardly the place to build nuclear reactors. The proposed Muria Peninsula location has been singled out for vociferous opposition by local communities. During a visit he made to Japan in June 2011, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono observed that Indonesia had the same degree of susceptibility to violent seismic activity as Japan, and announced that no nuclear reactors would be constructed in Indonesia during his presidency, which runs until 2014. It’s likely that Yudhoyono’s reluctance to build nuclear reactors will be shared by whoever succeeds him.

A popular joke among intellectuals in Bangkok is that whenever there is a military coup, plans for nuclear reactors are dusted off, but when civilian government returns, they are shelved. Before Fukushima, Thailand had tentative plans for five nuclear reactors generating 5000 MW of electricity to be completed sequentially in 2020, 2021, 2023, 2025, and 2027. After Fukushima, the then prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, ordered a review of emergency, safety, and anti-terrorist measures that would be put in place around the reactors; but reflecting strong public opinion, especially in Bangkok, the deputy prime minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, subsequently announced that plans would be halted indefinitely. In August 2011, the succeeding prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, announced that there were no plans to renew any nuclear projects. No doubt, unprecedented flooding in and around Bangkok in October–November 2011 would have confirmed any reservations held by the Shinawatra government about the wisdom of going nuclear.

In the 1970s, the Philippines constructed a Westinghouse pressurised-water reactor of 600 MW on the Bataan Peninsula, across Manila Bay from the capital. Because of graft by Marcos cronies and safety concerns, the plant was never commissioned, much to the disappointment of the Westinghouse contractors and the construction manager, Wally Wilgus, who had built it as a state-of-the-art turnkey operation. Until the disaster at Fukushima, persistent talk in the rumour mills of Manila coffee houses suggested that the reactor would soon be dusted off, fuelled, and commissioned to contribute to Manila’s growing energy demand. The disaster at Fukushima has, however, put a severe crimp in such ideas, and it is extremely unlikely that the reactor will be commissioned, or others built, in the foreseeable future.

Fifty per cent of Malaysia’s electricity is generated from natural gas; the rest, from coal and hydropower. Endorsed by deputy prime minister Najib Razak in June 2008, Tenaga Nasional (National Power, Malaysia’s privatised electricity company) has entertained ambitious plans to introduce nuclear reactors into Malaysia since 2009. The first, a 1000 MW plant costing an estimated AU$3.1billion, was to come online by 2020. On 27 June 2011, three months after Fukushima, Razak, by then prime minister, confirmed that, subject to safety and feasibility studies, the first reactor and its successors would still be built. But public sensitivity to radioactive tailings, generated from mineral-sands mining operations in Malaysia, became even stronger following the meltdown at Fukushima. Whether the government will succeed in overriding it and proceeding with a nuclear-power program remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, a good deal of tentativeness has accompanied speculations about nuclear-reactor construction in Singapore. Speaking on 11 April 2011, one month after the Fukushima catastrophe, a senior minister of state, S. Iswaran, would not rule out the possibility of Singapore developing nuclear power ‘in the long term’. At the 29th ASEAN Ministers on Energy Meeting, held in Brunei in September 2011, positive sentiments were expressed about renewables, oil, and gas, and the need to develop an ASEAN power grid and a trans-ASEAN gas pipeline, but there was little positive talk about nuclear energy.

In Latin America, Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela have had plans to acquire reactors, but these are all on the drawing board, and are likely to remain so. Due to heightened sensitivities after the catastrophe at Fukushima, the Chilean government in particular is inhibited about proceeding because the whole of the long, narrow country runs north–south along an earthquake fault line.

Until the mid-1960s, Latin America looked like an aspiring nuclear-weapons continent. Both Brazil and Argentina had nuclear-weapons programs. However, a proposal for a regional nuclear-weapons-free zone was initiated by Alfonso García Robles, a Mexican politician and diplomat, and Nobel laureate. This led to the Treaty of Tlatelolco in 1967, which proposed the creation of el Organismo para la Proscripción de las Armas Nucleares en la América Latina y el Caribe. The Treaty was signed by all states in Latin America and the Caribbean. Brazil and Argentina will continue to maintain the capacity to export nuclear technology, but their nuclear-weapons aspirations are dead, at least for the foreseeable future. (OPAL, Australia’s single research reactor, at Lucas Heights outside Sydney, is an Argentine-designed light-water reactor. Completed in 2007, it replaced HIFAR, an early-model reactor of American design commissioned in 1958.)

There are only two nuclear-power reactors on the whole of the vast African continent, both situated at Koeberg in South Africa. Although the country dismantled its capacity to enrich uranium, along with its ability to make nuclear weapons after the advent of free elections and the end of apartheid in 1994, the South African government has financed and supported a new, fourth-generation civil reactor system called the pebble bed modular reactor. This is a very-high-temperature, graphite-moderated, gas-cooled reactor, using spherical fuel elements of enriched uranium. It is claimed by its designers to have passive safety features that make it highly resistant to accident or meltdown. The concept originated in Germany, and is being pursued in China and the United States as well as in South Africa. Although it is still very much in the experimental stages, South Africa has highly ambitious plans to construct 24 such reactors by 2025. Or at least, it did until Fukushima. Its government may now be having second thoughts.

The rest of the countries on the African continent have few prospects to develop or finance nuclear power. There is no skilled workforce, power-sharing arrangement, infrastructure, or trans-African electricity grid of the kind that could handle or distribute the massive amount of electricity generated by nuclear reactors. And despite the claims of spin merchants in the nuclear-power industry, there is also little demand. While Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Namibia, and South Africa have considerable reserves of commercially recoverable uranium, buyers are likely to continue to be brokers for overseas nuclear power plants.

The above observations make the prognostications of the World Nuclear Association and the International Atomic Energy Agency look somewhat unrealistic. Certainly, 45 countries may have ‘actively considered’ nuclear power. But, as Sir Humphrey Appleby said in Yes, Minister, ‘consideration’ of a proposal means that the file has been lost, and ‘active consideration’ means that it has been found again. The hard realities of escalating capital costs, lack of prudential cover, lack of sufficiently robust power grids, unproven safety, environmental concerns, and popular resistance ensure that such predictions will probably remain in the files of unrealistically optimistic energy bureaucrats. The evidence is that of the six ‘frontrunners’ in this chapter — Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Vietnam, Belarus, and Jordan — only four have reasonable prospects of launching power programs in the next decade or two. They are Belarus, Vietnam, the UAE, and Iran, which has already begun its program and will continue to expand it unless it is bombed by Israel. All four have the funds to build reactors which the nuclear industry is eager to supply, and all are unimpeded by significant political opposition. For the same reasons, Saudi Arabia may also come on board, but more likely than not as part of a consortium of Gulf countries. Turkey and Jordan are uncertain; Turkey because of resistance from neighbours, and Jordan because of the prospects of political instability following the Arab Spring.

Of the rest, the picture is even more negative. My prediction is that apart from the abovementioned, no country which at present is without nuclear power will acquire it before alternative energy sources make such an expensive and dangerous technology unfeasible and uneconomical. Rising capital costs will be a discouragement, but not as much as the still-unfolding disaster at Fukushima and what it is costing Japan to repair the damage.