Boko Haram and Nigeria’s Civil Nuclear Ambitions: the Hidden Connection -By Yusuf O. Ali

Yusuf O. Ali

Boko Haram and Civil Nuclear Power – not exactly the sort of phrases you expect to find in the same sentence. While the latter is a dream (at least for people like myself who believe it potentially has a big part to play in Nigeria’s future power generation mix), all Nigerians and the world at large see the former as nothing but a real life nightmare, considering its horrendous humanitarian costs.

The key connecting word between these seemingly obvious paradoxes is security. More accurately, Boko Haram causes insecurity, which is the exact opposite of what a safe civil nuclear power programme relies upon. Although this article focuses on Boko Haram, the issues raised and addressed herein are equally applicable to any other insurgency and/or terrorist group.

The state of devastation and the threats that Boko Haram pose to the Nigerian state are well-known and are highly discussed topics. What is definitely less known to even Nigerians is the current state of civil nuclear power in Nigeria. To put it briefly, the World Nuclear Association regards Nigeria as a member of the “Developing Plans” group of countries.

These are countries that have relatively firm commitments to nuclear power in the future, developed basic levels of regulator/supervisory agencies and are developing local knowledge about nuclear power using locally installed research reactors. Nigeria’s firmest commitment to starting a civil nuclear programme is in the form of an intergovernmental agreement between the Nigerian Atomic Energy Commission and Russia’s Rosatom with the intention of having 4000MWe (Megawatts electric) of nuclear power in Nigeria by 2030.

As of 2014, the finer details of the proposed reactors; issues regarding plant siting, financing, waste management, amongst others, were yet to be thrashed out between the two agencies. Nigeria’s research reactor is a 30kW reactor located at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria research centre.

The indirect threat that Boko Haram poses to Nigeria’s civil nuclear ambition is that their seemingly unchallenged crusade through Nigeria’s North-East threatens to undermine any confidence the international world has in the security capabilities of the Nigerian state. At the end of the day, Boko Haram is a terrorist group that reportedly started out using improvised explosives kept in used Coca-Cola cans. Consequentially, this loss of confidence will make these countries less willing to support Nigeria’s civil nuclear programme because they can see the big picture and how the theft of nuclear material in Nigeria can cause grave security concerns for their respective countries. Nigeria has neither the financial nor the human resources to deliver a civil nuclear programme on her own.

On the other hand, the direct threats that Boko Haram pose to Nigeria’s civil nuclear programme can be separated into two categories – operational threats and waste storage/management threats.

The first class of threats mainly encompasses the security challenges that Boko Haram could pose to the safe operation of nuclear power plants in Nigeria. In a worst-case scenario, if Boko Haram was to successfully penetrate and cause an explosion at a power plant, this could result in a reactor core meltdown (especially in reactors that do not have passive safety systems). This core meltdown will then lead to a release of radioactivity into the surrounding area.

On its own, the radiation release is not expected to cause a lot of instantaneous deaths, it does however have the potential to cause a substantial increase in the propensity of those exposed to getting cancers in the future, if proper medical care is not rendered urgently. A report by the National Academy of Science suggests that in cases of a release of radiation, this radiation “could” be detected and removed from the air, thereby minimising the adverse effects of the radiation release. It must however be noted that the devices for doing this do not currently exist and that such a process is expected to be extremely expensive and time consuming.

The other class of direct threats covers the security challenges that Boko Haram could pose to the safe operation of radioactive waste management/storage facilities in Nigeria. These facilities could hold substantial quantities of radioactive materials, so the importance of their safety cannot be trivialised. One of the most important aspects of radioactive waste management is the conversion of the waste into a stable form (usually some form of glass) through vitrification.

In this stable state, these wastes will not be of much use to terrorists, both in the fabrication of a bomb or if they attempt to disseminate the radioactive waste directly. The concern however should be that radioactive wastes are produced daily and cannot be immediately conditioned and vitrified. In their holding state, these wastes could provide substantial threats to public safety if in the hands of terrorists like Boko Haram.

The identification of the threats is one thing, arguably, the more important issue is understanding how these threats will actually affect Nigeria’s civil power ambitions.

For starters, the security threats posed by Boko Haram place an extra constraint on the siting of nuclear facilities. It goes without saying that any added constraint makes things more expensive. In this case, security challenges posed by Boko Haram could mean that nuclear power plants have to be located substantially further away from the loads they are envisaged to meet. Concomitantly, this will lead to added costs in transmission amongst others. For a country with limited financial resources and an immature liberated electricity market like Nigeria, these are constraints that investors in the power sector could very much do without.

Also, the existence of groups like Boko Haram will place more emphasis on the security needs of a civil nuclear programme in Nigeria and further increase the associated costs substantially. To develop a feel for the sort of numbers involved in this, the UK Civil Nuclear Police Authority had a net expenditure of N30 billion in the 2014/15 year. Having to specially develop protocols/units to address the challenges posed by Boko Haram could lead this number to rise even further.

The humanitarian devastation of Boko Haram provides more then enough motivation for the government to quash them. That said, the inconspicuous relationship between Boko Haram and the government’s ability to safely deliver Nigeria’s civil nuclear programme highlighted herein provides more incentives.

It is rather ironic that the indirect threat that Boko Haram poses to Nigeria’s civil nuclear ambitions arguably has a bigger role to play in determining whether these ambitions ever take off, due to the aforementioned direct threats. This is because in the protection of nuclear facilities around the world, a lot of emphasis is placed on the presence of sophisticated security forces that compliment the inherent safety measures incorporated into the design of such facilities. In other words, the perception of Nigeria’s security frailties is more detrimental to our civil ambitions than our actual ability to protect the plants; something I am very convinced we can do safely.

Rapidly solving the Boko Haram insurgency problem should send a definitive signal to the international world that Nigeria’s security forces are at levels that are still deserving of their historical international acclaim. This could be the key that unlocks the door of much-needed international acceptance and support for Nigeria’s civil nuclear ambitions.

Yusuf O. Ali, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, completed an MPhil in Nuclear Energy from Cambridge in 2013. He can be reached on e-mail at: yoa20@cam.ac.uk, and Twitter: @YalyAliYusuf