re posted from EIR DAILY ALERT SERVICE
Africa’s Development Requires Twenty-Fold Increase in Electricity, 7,000 New Nuclear Power Plants
June 26 (EIRNS)—Preliminary work by the LaRouche Economic Task Force has found that in order to counter the imminent fatal effects on Africa of the COVID-19 pandemic and famine, as well as to secure and develop Africa’s future, the continent requires a twenty-fold increase in its net electricity-generating capacity—the power equivalent to the building of 7,000 new nuclear power plants.
This electricity would not only be necessary to power hospitals, but to run the whole economy: water purification plants and irrigation, manufacturing plants, high-speed rail systems, homes and apartments, etc.
In 2017, the populations of Africa’s 54 nations collectively consumed 683 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. For a continent of 1.2 billion people, this is gravely insufficient. The LaRouche Task Force used the United States’ per-capita electricity consumption annually as a provisional standard, i.e. the total electricity used for the total U.S. economy—manufacturing, agriculture, housing, etc.—expressed per person. To reach that working standard, Africa would require raising electricity consumption to 14,450 billion kilowatt-hours annually, for all purposes of the economy, an increase in electricity consumption of an additional 13,770 billion kilowatt-hours. This is a twenty-fold increase.
To meet this standard for Africa, were the electricity to be supplied primarily through nuclear power, this would require the construction on the continent of 1,400 new thousand-megawatt nuclear power plants, joined by 5,600 new 60-megawatt small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs): a total of 7,000 nuclear plants. The 1,000-megawatt plants would be sited in cities and large urban areas; the SMRs would be situated where energy need is less geographically intense. This power equivalent could be produced also by a combination of nuclear power, hydroelectric power, and gas- and coal-fired plants.
Because nuclear plants take five to seven years to build and install, the construction of a string of gas-fired plants, with a 150 to 500 megawatt capacity, should be started immediately, with construction times of 12 to 24 months, with abundant gas supplies on the continent itself. Russia should float 60-megawatt SMRs to Africa as quickly as it can produce them. At the same time, there must be an eye toward Africa participating in the construction of nuclear plants, hydroelectric dams and gas-fired plants.
Ultimately, African nations should be able to produce these plants themselves. This is a critical part of the LaRouche plan to create 1.5 billion new productive jobs.
Source: EIR Daily Alert Service