Atoms for Africa: Is There a Future for Civil Nuclear Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Historically, many emerging economies have turned to nuclear power to meet energy deficits, and there is immense potential for nuclear to provide a clean baseload source of energy to meet Africa’s large energy deficit while also minimizing carbon emissions. Fossil fuel power plants like oil, coal, and gas not only pollute but must have a constant delivery of fuel, which can be a challenge where transportation and pipeline infrastructure is underdeveloped.1 Kenny (2008) argues that since nuclear power plants (NPPs) have fewer siting constraints due to the small size and extremely dense fuel, they could be located closer to load centers to avoid the transmission costs, which could be high in African countries where there are larger distances between significant population centers.1 Additionally, nuclear technology could be used for other non-power uses on the continent such as desalination and industrial process heat.