To become an industrialised nation, we need nuclear power

By MUNGAI KIHANYA

The Sunday Nation

Nairobi,

13 July 2025

Rory Sutherland, the celebrated advertising guru, once said that nuclear power needs a new name to make it more acceptable to the general public. The problem is that it came too soon after the dropping of two nuclear bombs in Japan towards the end of the second world war.

I believe this is what drove the people of Kilifi to reject the proposed construction of a nuclear power plant in the region. It is now planned for Siaya. Despite data showing that nuclear energy is safer and more environmentally friendly that most of the other sources (including hydroelectricity!), the public still fears it greatly.

Still, we need to ask the question: does Kenya need nuclear energy? Many on the “no” side claim that we have more than enough solar, geothermal, hydro and wind sources which are all environmentally safe. But is this true?

The ministry of energy estimates the viable potentials of these sources as follows: 15,000MW (or 15GW) of solar, 10GW of geothermal, 6GW of hydro and 3GW of wind. Of these, the most reliable is geothermal and the least is solar. Still, I have doubts about the solar figure, especially after noting that many countries in the temperate regions of the globe have installed much higher capacities than this. Japan has 92GW and Germany 90GW of solar electricity.

Nevertheless, the total viable potential from our four main green energy sources comes to 34GW. Is this enough to power our dream of becoming an industrialised nation? Let’s compare to other countries.

China, Japan and Germany have installed capacities of 3,430GW, 362GW and 264GW respectively and their populations are 1,420, 123 and 84 million people. It turns out, therefore, that an industrialised country needs about 2.5GW of electricity generation per million people. We are currently at 0.06GW (3.3GW total installed capacity with 57 million people) which is very far from the target!

With present population, we require about 142GW to support an industrialised nation status. This compares well with South Korea: 144GW with 51 million people. Our available sources can only provide 34GW at full exploitation. That leaves a shortfall of over 100GW.

Even if we are able to exploit more from solar than the 15GW estimate, it would be foolhardy to rely so heavily on one energy source. We were in that situation in the late 1990s when almost all our electricity came from hydro dams; then the rains failed. It wasn’t pretty! For these reasons, I support exploration of the nuclear option.