For many people, just the mention of nuclear power sends shivers down their spines, signalling how apprehensive many perceive this energy source.
For these people, the images that often come to mind are not electricity, hospitals, or factories. They are Chernobyl, Fukushima, radiation, and catastrophic explosions.
The fear is understandable as nuclear accidents can be devastating, and the consequences of a serious failure can extend far beyond the power plant itself.
But nuclear energy expert Prof. Bismark Tyobeka believes public perception does not always tell the full story. When safety is measured against the amount of electricity produced, nuclear power looks considerably different, and potentially far safer, than its reputation suggests.
He explains that in more than 70 years of commercial nuclear electricity generation, three accidents have dominated the public debate. These accidents are the Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011.
The consequences were vastly different. Prof. Tyobeka recounts that the Three Mile Island caused no deaths or injuries. Fukushima recorded no acute radiation deaths among workers or members of the public, although the evacuation produced significant social and health consequences. Chernobyl was the most severe, with about 30 immediate deaths directly attributable to the accident and thousands of potential long-term cancer deaths among heavily exposed populations.
These events remain powerful reminders of what can go wrong. But there is another way of looking at energy safety, which is how many people die for the amount of electricity an energy source produces.
Prof. Tyobeka narrates that a widely used comparison estimates about 25 deaths per terawatt-hour (TWh) of electricity for coal, 18 for oil, and three for natural gas. The corresponding estimates are around 0.04 for wind, 0.03 for nuclear, and 0.02 for solar.
In simple terms, fossil fuels impose a much larger mortality burden per unit of electricity, largely because of air pollution as well as accidents.
However, he acknowledges that this does not make nuclear risk-free. Rather, it changes the question from “Can nuclear power be dangerous?”, to which the answer is clearly yes to “How dangerous is it compared with the alternatives?”
This conversation, he believes, is critical for Africa, where many African countries are desperate for more reliable electricity to power industries, businesses, hospitals and increasingly data centres. If the continent rejects nuclear power because of the fear generated by a handful of historic disasters, it must still confront the risks associated with the alternatives, including air pollution from fossil fuels and the economic damage caused by unreliable electricity.
Prof. Tyobeka further argues that nuclear technology is also evolving, and artificial intelligence could make it safer still.
“AI is a game changer,” he said. “It can potentially enhance the safety features of nuclear power-plant designs.”
AI could help operators detect unusual patterns, identify equipment deterioration, predict maintenance needs, and make faster decisions during plant operations. Instead of waiting for a component to fail before replacing it, operators could use data to anticipate when it is likely to become a problem.
This creates an intriguing technological relationship where AI, which itself is often viewed with suspicion, could become part of the solution to one of nuclear power’s biggest problems, which is public confidence in its safety.
Prof. Tyobeka is convinced that if the continent is going to need substantially more power for industrialisation and its emerging digital economy, nuclear energy may deserve to be judged not by its worst moments alone, but by the evidence of what it delivers, and the technologies that could make it safer still.
