By Nnaji Jekwu Onovo

COP27 just like the ones before it, is sounding alarm bells for the end to the use of fossil fuels as energy and power sources. COP, acronym for “Conference of the Parties” which in turn is a short form of “United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties” under the watch of UNFCCC secretariat tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. The ultimate objective of all agreements under the UNFCCC is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system, in a time frame which allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development.

Fossil fuels are the greatest contributors to the threat of climate change; so the world is uniting to stop their applications; embracing cleaner renewable energies, SUN, WIND and HYDRO. What is Nigeria’s position vis-à-vis our abundance deposit of fossil fuels including natural gas? Nigeria is a country plagued by complex overlapping challenges, including Dutch Disease (resource curse). This informs the country’s inability to harness our abundant natural gas resource for power generation. Worst is that about 80% of our foreign exchange earnings is from oil and gas sales. So, the idea of world pivoting away from fossil fuels is unsettling us. We should not be in panic mode, and must avoid making irrational decisions.

President Muhammadu Buhari has said Nigeria would explore nuclear energy to generate electricity. The President spoke at the just concluded International Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Power in the 21st Century held in Washington DC; between 26 and 28 October 2022 few days before the start of COP27 at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt on 6th November 2022. Buhari, who spoke through the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Sen. Adeleke Mamora, said like most other nations on the continent, Nigeria, with a population of over 200 million people, had a serious energy supply deficit, making it compelling for the government to critically look towards other energy options that were affordable, more environmentally friendly and sustainable.

While Nigeria should aim for diversity in its power sources, nuclear power plants are very expensive to construct and fraught with serious risks; diversification does not start with the most expensive and risky option. There is no perfect energy source. Each and every one has its own advantages and compromises. Nuclear power is once again considered a prominent alternative, because it’s now being touted as a more environmentally beneficial solution since it emits far fewer greenhouse gases during electricity generation than coal or other fossil fuel (including gas) burning power plants. Radiation isn’t easily dealt with, especially in nuclear waste and maintenance materials, and expensive solutions are needed to contain, control, and shield both people and the environment from its harm.

In several respects, nuclear and fossil fuel-burning power plants are similar; they both use heat to generate steam and drive turbines to produce electricity. They mainly differ in where their heat comes from; a nuclear reactor uses radioactive decay, and a fossil-fuel plant burns coal, oil or natural gas. In addition to the technical differences between the two approaches, they affect the environment differently: Fossil-fuel plants are notorious for greenhouse gas emissions, whereas nuclear reactors are known for radioactive waste.

All utility scale nuclear power plants simply use the reactor as a “nuclear boiler” to raise the steam which is then used to drive conventional steam turbine powered generators using the Rankine Steam cycle in much the same way as the fossil fuel. Instead of burning fossil fuel to provide the heat source in the boiler, heat is generated in a nuclear reactor by the controlled nuclear fission of unstable isotopes of heavy metals such as uranium.

Back in the 1950s, nuclear power held out the promise of abundant electricity “too cheap to meter,” or almost free. But today, utilities are encountering something they never expected: Natural-gas-fired power plants are cheaper to run than nuclear units. Nigeria is arguably a gas-resource country with huge gas reserves. It has proven gas reserves of about 184tcf broken into 95tcf associated gas and 89tcf non-associated gas and estimated as the world’s 7th largest gas reserves. What is the quantity of our uranium deposit, as major feedstock to nuclear power plants? A nuclear power station is resource-hungry and, apart from the fuel, uses many rare metals in its construction. One nuclear reactor plant requires about 20.5 km2 (7.9 mi2) of land to accommodate the nuclear power station itself, its exclusion zone, its enrichment plant, ore processing, and supporting infrastructure. Secondly, nuclear reactors need to be located near a massive body of coolant water, but away from dense population zones and natural disaster zones. We are better off investing in other energy solutions that are truly scalable, especially gas-powered plants.

It is pertinent to note that the developed economies sponsoring COPs are playing double standard and are not quite keen at abandoning fossil fuels. Europe includes natural gas and nuclear in the E.U.’s sustainable energy taxonomy. Europe’s taxonomy is its classification system for defining “environmentally sustainable economic activities” for investors, policymakers and companies. Two of the largest emitters, China and India, plan to increase emissions until 2030. They’ve argued that their growing economies need the support of fossil fuels, as other wealthier countries have historically done. Nigeria should therefore make the most of what we have, natural gas, to get what we want, steady power supply.

We require a solution with a very short lead time, in order to meet our electricity needs and the most viable is natural gas powered plants. The technology is being used extensively all over the world and is readily available. Stations could be erected, depending on required capacity, in a lead time of 1 – 3 years as opposed to the nuclear stations that require 6 – 8 years lead time.

By and large, we should embrace other renewable and sustainable energy, especially, SUN, WIND and HYDRO. In the words of Thomas Alva Edison: “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy – sun, wind and tide. — I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”