The government still hopes to establish the country's first nuclear plant despite an adamant 'NO' from Kilifi leaders, Energy CS Opiyo Wandayi has said.
The Kilifi leaders said the county is not ready to host a nuclear power plant when the CS and Nuclear Power and Energy Agency met them on Friday for a discussion about the proposed plant at Uyombo, in Matsangoni, Kilifi North subcounty.
Wandayi said the government will continue engaging the leaders and people of Kilifi to come to an amicable solution.
“As you know, the government of President William Ruto is a caring and listening government. So, in the spirit of caring and listening, we continue to engage with stakeholders, especially on this matter of nuclear power plant,” he said after the meeting.
Wandayi said they got the views of the people of Kilifi through their leaders.
“We will continue with engagements so we can in the end get a solution. We believe that as we continue to consult and engage extensively, we shall get a common way forward. And therefore this engagement is not ending today here in Kilifi,” the CS said Friday.
The government, he said, will invite the leaders, civil society and other people from Kilifi to Vienna, Austria, and other places across the globe on fact finding and capacity building missions to get different perspectives.
Already, Kilifi North MP Owen Baya, who led the Kilifi leadership in rejecting the nuclear power plant plans on Friday, is in Vienna for the same fact finding mission.
His trip was sponsored by the government and he left the county on Friday evening.
CS Wandayi said, “We continue to benchmark as a country with the best practices within and outside. All is not lost. We still believe that we have a chance as a country to explore this particular project, which is very important for our national energy security and industrial development.”
However, Centre for Governance Justice and Environmental Action executive director Phyllis Omido questioned the wisdom of benchmarking in Austria.
“They have gone to benchmark nuclear in a country that banned nuclear generation,” she said on Sunday.
Omido noted that Austrians in a referendum on November 5, 1978, rejected nuclear energy.
This was then reinforced with a constitutional law in 1999.
Omido said Kilifi needs a nuclear-free policy and urged MCAs in the county to work on it.
“Although the International Atomic Energy Agency is headquartered in Vienna, Austria, the country itself rejected nuclear in 1978. As a country, shouldn’t we learn from their country’s walk and not their talk?" she posed.
“Isn’t this enough justification for Parliament to ascend to the disbandment of Nupea by Cabinet? We have cited gross incompetence as a major reason for our anti-nuclear stance."
However, CS Wandayi said the government has more than enough options, with the national grid serviced from multiple sources of energy, including geothermal, hydro, wind and solar sources.
“This one [nuclear] was going to be the last one for the time being,” he said,
Wandayi said it is important for the government, as a strategy, to diversify its energy mix for assurance of security of energy supply and quality of the energy itself in the national grid from industrial development.
He said Kenya is doing very well in terms of energy efficiency and transition to green energy, not only in the EAC region but also in the entire African continent.
Earlier on Friday, MP Baya said the leadership of Kilifi has unanimously agreed the county is not ready to host a nuclear plant.
“We have issues of the ecological zone, we have seismic issues, we have very many issues that are not cleared for us to be able to host a nuclear power plant,” he said.
The legislator said as national leaders, they have a duty of care for the people of Kilifi and the country to protect them from anything that will bring harm to the people.
“As Kilifi, we are not an available site for a nuclear power plant,” the Kilifi North MP said.
He, however, left the door open for more discussions in future over the nuclear power plant.
“Waziri is free to continue to consult us to see how we go forward,” he said.
Kilifi Governor Gideon Mung’aro said this is not the first time they have said no to the nuclear power plant.
“We are not ready not because we do not want development projects, in fact, we want more projects, but the cost benefit analysis shows there are more costs than benefits in this particular project,” the governor said.
He said as a leadership of Kilifi, they are still open for more talks.
“We have told the CS that all this is because residents got more accurate and clear information from the opponents of the project than from the government,” Mung’aro said.
