There was a letter

in the ‘Namib-

ian’ paper

(the one which aroused the ire of the Founding Father, by criticising some fatherly pronouncement, and thus still suffers a ban on government advertising)

from a presumed UK nuclear enthusiast, who congratulated Namibia on ‘opting’ for nuclear power. I don’t see it’s any of his business, and anyway the country has not ‘opted’ for nuclear power (a sloppy headline) – it’s just one of all possible options for future energy needs. Fine. Nuclear power is great, but it does have some limitations, like the inability to power things like cars, trains and planes. Then there is the waste problem. The letter writer’s suggestion to bury the highly radioactive waste where the ore was first mined, is rather bizarre. Anyone ready for a Swakop which glows in the dark, even without the Christmas lights switched on?

Beyond this, there is a worrying tendency of some politicians and writers, who did not quite make it past Std 8 science, to assume that because a country has widespread deposits of (rather low grade) uranium ore - see pic of awesome pit at the Rossing mine - the country can produce heaps and heaps of nuclear energy for itself. This is not necessarily so. (On another level, consider the example of Ghana, which for a hundred years has been about the largest producer of cocoa beans but which has yet to manufacture its own chocolate bar). Namibia actually might be better off selling uranium ore and buying electricity. Because nuclear energy is difficult, much more so than chocolate. First you have to enrich your ore. This is technically and politically complicated. Politically, because any small 3rd world country which tries to start enriching gets the US very twitchy, and tends to get you membership of the Axis of Evil club.

Then you can’t just suck energy out of the material: you have to build reactors, which are not cheap (write down the largest number which you know a name for, and add three noughts). You have to ask the French, British or Russians to build one for you – more neo-colonial dependency. These reactors have a distressing tendency to go on the blink (ask our South African friends). Plus the occasional meltdown. They may not produce greenhouse gases, but they consume huge amounts of water, which Namibia does not have. Usually then, they have to be situated by the sea. The effluent then would kill most of the fish which the country also depends on.

Nuclear energy? Promising idea, but needs more work.