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{
    "id": 914718,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/914718/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 385,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Nominated, ANC",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Godfrey Osotsi",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13172,
        "legal_name": "Godfrey Osotsi",
        "slug": "godfrey-osotsi"
    },
    "content": "The second reservation is that this regulatory body is domiciled in the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government. If you look at the composition of the people who will sit on the Commission, they are rightly security-oriented individuals. We will be sending a wrong signal to the international community if we structure the Commission in that manner. The reason we want to go nuclear is because we are looking for nuclear energy. That is another issue that we need to consider. The other reason is that there is a tendency nowadays to place a lot of critical functions under the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government. Recently, we passed the Computer Misuse and Cybercrime Act and domiciled it in the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government. We are having challenges in implementing this legislation because it has been domiciled in a ministry where there are no experts on matters of computer misuse and cybercrime. This is another case of a legislation being placed in the wrong ministry. I suggest that we put this function in the Ministry of Energy. After all, the other organisation that deals with nuclear matters is the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency, which is domiciled in the Ministry of Energy. Why do we want to bring confusion? The other issue is that nuclear commissions globally are supposed to be independent. For example, the USA one is independent. The only thing that Trump does is to appoint the chairperson of the commission, who is vetted by the Senate and that is it. Here, there is no independence in this Commission because the Cabinet Secretary will appoint people to the Commission. The CS will be dealing with this Commission on a day-to-day basis. The other issue which I am concerned about, and the Chairman has talked about is that the construction of the first nuclear plant has now been moved to 2030. I want to make a correction that recently, they made an announcement that they were postponing the date from 2027 to 2036. More shocking is that they want to put up two nuclear plants each producing 600 megawatts of nuclear energy. That is very little power. Nigeria wants to put up a plant for 4,000 megawatts. South Africa wants to put up a plant for 9,600 megawatts. We want to put up two plants each producing 600 megawatts at a cost of over Kshs900 billion. It is not worth it. The cost of constructing a nuclear plant is too high. The duration of putting up a nuclear plant is also too long. Most importantly, the cost of decommissioning a nuclear plant after its lifespan is too high. For example, Japan wants to decommission one of its nuclear plants. It will cost them US$20 billion. That is why I agree with the Majority Party Whip that this is a matter which we need to look at very carefully. We are better off investing in green energy than going into nuclear energy without looking at all the issues clearly. We are talking about having a nuclear plant in nine years, but we still do not have a research reactor in this country. South Africa, which is putting up a nuclear energy plant, has a research reactor. Nigeria also has it. We cannot put up a plant without putting in place relevant things that will help us achieve our plan."
}