A nuclear future for Africa?

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nuclear power is back in favour, as more countries across the world consider ways to cut carbon emissions to combat climate change.

Countries like China and Japan are planning to build more reactors, but should nations in Africa invest in renewable sources of generating electricity, like solar panels, wind turbines and geo-thermal power, instead of nuclear?

We examine how energy generated from nuclear fission has huge advance costs which would mean African governments finding loans from willing investors, but that might cede more economic influence to China or Russia.

We also hear how Amazon, Google and Microsoft are investing in nuclear power, using smaller modular reactors to run data storage centres in the United States, as demand for electricity is expected to surge when artificial intelligence is running at full capacity. Could the developing technology of SMRs prove useful in Africa?

If you would like to get in touch with the show, please email: [email protected]

Presented and produced by Russell Padmore

(Picture: The Koeberg nuclear power station, Cape Town, South Africa. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Nuclear power is back in favour, as countries across the world consider ways to cut carbon emissions to combat climate change.
0:10.1	Several African nations are planning to build reactors, but could lessons be learned from South Africa, the continent-only country with the nuclear industry?
0:18.6	Nuclear is not an easy answer at all.
0:27.4	It hasn't been as reliable due to various problems with the reactor, which resulted in having to be shut down.
0:28.3	More than 60 nuclear power stations are planned or under construction across the world,
0:33.9	the biggest expansion since the 1990s.
0:37.1	Can countries in Africa secure investment to build reactors?
0:40.8	New finances are coming in for nuclear, specifically, particularly Russia and China.
0:45.6	And certainly I think there would be political strings that would be attached to that financing.
0:50.6	And the Vice President at Amazon explains why global technology giants are investing in nuclear power.
0:56.4	Nuclear power as well as renewable energy over the course of many years.
1:00.2	We think that they can all be quite competitive.
1:02.7	Business Daily and the prospect of nuclear electricity to power economic growth in Africa and beyond.
1:12.6	Deadly radioactivity of atomic power is being put to work, not for destruction, but for the
1:17.7	benefit of mankind.
1:19.3	Cinema audiences in the 1950s being shown how atomic energy was transforming society.
1:25.7	But decades on, the industry hasn't taken off in Africa, a continent where
1:29.8	electricity is often in short supply. Many African governments are planning to invest in nuclear
1:35.6	reactors, but would the money be better spent on green technologies like wind turbines or solar
1:41.7	panels to generate electricity.
1:47.2	Steve Thomas is an emeritus professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich in London.
1:49.5	A lot of African countries have had ambitions to build and operate nuclear power plants,
	...

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