Nigeria has seal and signed agreements with Russia to build and operate a nuclear power plant in the country.
Rosatom, the state-owned Russian nuclear company said in a statement that feasibility studies for the plant and a research center construction will include site screening, capacity, financing, and time frames of the projects. Representatives from the firm and the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (what? We have an atomic energy commission? Just how many commissions do we have??) signed the deal.
This agreement is on the heels of the intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the field of the peaceful usage of nuclear technologies that both nations signed in 2009. Just so we’re clear, it was not a good idea then, it’s not a good idea now. In 2015, Nigeria started conversations with Rosatom to build as many as four nuclear power plants costing about $20 billion.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, only distributes an average of 4,500 megawatts of electricity – even though the ministry for power regularly lies that we’ve reached 7,000MW, our hot homes dispute this number. Half the output from our biggest power plant, Egbin, is lost because of inadequate transmission infrastructure. So how will we maintain a nuclear plant?