Bagasse, the fibrous residue formed after the juice from sugar cane has been extracted, looks like a problem. However, agronomists swear that it can be burned to generate electricity that can run the sugar factory producing it.
Molasses, the thick brown syrup left after sugar crystallization, looks like a pollutant. However, distillers swear that it is the feedstock for ethanol production and industrial adhesives.
Filter cake, sludge from clarified cane juice, resembles sewage. However, farmers swear that it is an effective organic fertilizer that improves the soil structure in parts of the Lake Victoria Basin’s clay-heavy terrain, which poses challenges for industrial agriculture.
Equally nuclear “waste,” radioactive ceramic pellets each about the size of a pencil eraser, sealed inside metal tubes, sounds like a burden. However, nuclear power proponents swear that 96% of this “waste” is actually still fuel. They also swear that most of the remainonh 3%, the so-called short-lived isotopes, might emit radiation that can penetrate the human body.
Turning Sugar “Waste” into Energy and Fertiliser
However, they swear that nuclear “waste” fresh from the reactor is first stored in a pool of water laced with “neutron poisons” like Boron that stop the production of the short-lived isotopes. The remaining “waste”, once the short-lived radioisotopes have decayed, is then sealed in concrete dry casks and stored on site.
Nuclear power proponents swear that there is thus no nuclear “waste” problem. They point at how France, or any country for that matter, deals with nuclear “waste.”
During the oil shock of the 70s, France threw all its chips in on nuclear power. The 26 nuclear reactors built over 20 years are now part of the 56 reactors that produce 70% of the country’s electricity.
Divided, every French person’s share of nuclear “waste” from their personal electricity consumption fits snug inside a golf ball. All of France’s waste is kept in a vault the size of the venue Mbavu Destroyer got destroyed by Majembe.
The Rhone River flows is a shared resource as it flows through several European countries. It is thus a shared resource like Lake Victoria, where Kenya plans to participate in the nuclear power renaissance currently sweeping the globe by building a couple of reactors in Siaya County, which is home to the Late Raila Odinga, a statesman and also one of the most prolific engineers this country has ever produced.
Proponents swear that had any of the nuclear plants on the Rhone in France been coal plants capable of producing the same amount of electricity, their waste would form a column taller than Mt. Longonot.
“Waste” solar panels buried in hideous landfills contain carcinogens like arsenic that can leach into the groundwater, poisoning wells.
Also Read: Dumped: A Waste Picker’s Story Sheds Light on Kenya’s Plastic Crisis
Nuclear power proponents swear that neither the French nor the Swiss are dying of radiation poisoning. Instead, they swear that France produces the cleanest and cheapest electricity in Europe, even exporting some of it to Germany at a profit.
Hoary myths have started appearing in Siaya with such frequency that academics who should jealously guard their reputations have no qualms about repeating verbatim the contents of cartoons.
Diverging from the stellar reputations built over years of research and teaching, these academics have nothing to back their claims other than images of glowing green barrels.
Nuclear power proponents swear these people can’t even get the colors right when talking about this very important topic. Nuclear “waste” is a dark ceramic that only glows in the dark in the sense that all matter emits faint thermal radiation.
The theatrical green is from a cartoon, and if any color was to be associated with radiation, it would be the very sanitary, very mild light blue haze one sees in nuclear reactors, courtesy of the Cherenkov effect.
Why Nuclear “Waste” Is Considered by Experts as Usable Fuel
Nuclear power proponents also swear that nuclear “waste” contains material of very significant economic value. For example, every NASA mission beyond Jupiter runs on plutonium-238 thermoelectric generators.
The isotope also powers cardiac pacemakers, but supplies have been exhausted for decades. At Ksh. 1.3 billion per kilogram, there are serious proposals to produce more of the nuclear “waste.”
Attached to cancer-seeking antibodies, nuclear power proponents swear that Actinium-225, which until 1993 was a waste, delivers lethal bursts of alpha radiation to tumors while leaving surrounding tissue unharmed. Fewer than 1 in 5000 patients who could benefit from actinium-225 therapy are receiving it.
This nuclear “waste” is so scarce and precious that, to get hands-on its precursor, Thorium-229, Bill Gates’ TerraPower paid Ksh. 1.16 billion for just 225 grams of “waste” nuclear power proponents swear. That is Ksh. 52 billion per kilogram.
A gram of this waste valued at Ksh.51 million is sufficient to buy and fuel a fleet of top-end guzzlers to try convincing local communities in Siaya that they should settle for energy poverty and that the professionals in the industry are wrong.
They insist with little coherent evidence that what the industry calls “Spent Nuclear Fuel,” is actually “waste.”
Also Read: Anne Kitelesi: Kenyan Woman Who Rose from House Help to Founder of Zero Waste Kenya
The Science Behind Nuclear Storage and Safety Measures
In the 70s, Ralph Nader’s repeated declaration of plutonium in nuclear “waste, being the most dangerous thing ever had gone unchallenged for so long that it turned into the conventional “wisdom” we see now that Kenya wants to use all its tools to eliminate energy poverty.
When Bernie Cohen, who knew that if injested 99.99% of plutonium passes through the digestive system unchanged within 48 hours, challenged Nader to eat, gram for gram, as much caffeine as Bernie was willing to eat plutonium, Nader declined.
Both of them knew that, unlike Plutonium, all ingested caffeine is absorbed completely, can cross the blood-brain barrier, and is lethal in sufficient quantities.
Earlier, while opening the Calder Hall reactor facility in the UK in 1956, a young Queen Elizabeth II was invited to hold a lump of plutonium wearing what the historical record suggests were her customary white gloves. She outlived almost every contemporary of her generation.
Nuclear power proponents swear that a person standing next to stored nuclear ‘waste” for a whole year receives a radiation dose lower than a chest X-ray. They also swear that other than plutonium, most nuclear “waste” is dangerous only if ingested.
They swear that nuclear “waste” is a solid and we would literally have to eat hot stones for nuclear “waste” to be dangerous.
As such, on top of the global standards and procedures refined over decades to handle nuclear “waste”, once the nuclear plant is operational, lighting our homes at night and powering life support machines in the ICU, Kenya should consider painting “Do Not Eat Nuclear Waste” on nuclear “waste” storage just to be sure.
