Sunday, April 28, 2013

THE COLLAPSE OF GHANA’S ATOMIC ENERGY PROJECT: A DESPICABLE CONSPIRACY



A nuclear energy plant
By Peter Kofi Amponsah
Nothing in contemporary Ghanaian political history is more pathetic than the amazing lack of patriotism and naked display of disloyalty to the country of one’s birth by certain sections of the educated elite in our society. This unfortunate observation is even understated because those, whose disappointing conduct invited it, were highly respectable people who cannot be said to be unaware of what they were about, and the true implication of their actions.

A tangible case of a despicable conspiracy which resulted in a major disaster for the country and its people, the full implication of which is yet to be realized was their participation in a most disgraceful exercise which decided the fate of the Ghana Atomic Energy Project after the 1966 coup.

As it always happens in such cases, the things that in stormy periods remain concealed from public view become visible. Today we have the possibility to clearly, see the close interconnection between the internal and external factors of development of nations, and the extent to which the external factors sometimes become key catalysts of the internal processes.

A feeling of frustration at the reluctance of many respectable personalities in our society whom I consider better competent to take steps that are urgently needed in the supreme interests  of our country has forced me to take up my pen on this very serious issue over which a highly ridiculous silence has remained unbroken for many years now.

This is because on this issue enough facts are now known for the appropriate steps to be taken immediately, but those whose duty it is to present these facts in their proper forms to governments, for reasons still to be discovered, pretend to be completely unaware of them and therefore prefer to let such a vital issue continue to be decided by emotion and unreasoning prejudice.

This is one of the major problems that continue to agitate the minds of our people today. What is more distressing is the fact that at that particular point in our history, the preconditions for a spectacular breakthrough had been firmly created and it would be difficult for any patriotic citizen in the correct picture of events not to be overwhelmed by the extent of the catastrophe.

I am quite sure  there are a number of scientists who may justifiably be frustrated by what can be described as government’s ambiguous attitude towards the whole Atomic Energy Programme.

The puppet NLC administration itself realizing the indignation of the people, tried to camouflage that disgraceful sell-out by an incredible machination tantamount to national suicide. What is more, all the explanations offered for this objectionable action had collapsed completely under the bombardment of new facts. What is now known to have actually taken place was a most insidious conspiracy against the country and its people hatched by highly qualified brains.

Sir John Cockcroft
Sir John Cockcroft, a British nuclear engineer who was brought down to Ghana under very dubious circumstances to investigate the viability or otherwise of the Ghana Atomic Energy Project, had by his recommendations openly and shamelessly demonstrated his regrettable lack of respect for the right of the African people to acquire modern scientific knowledge and technology, and this would have been enough to condemn him as a total disgrace to the world scientific community, were  it not for the obvious fact  that he came down from the United Kingdom with a clear political instruction to bury the Ghana Atomic Energy Project.

From all indication, his presence in Ghana as a nuclear scientist was only to mislead the world public opinion, by giving the impression that the decision to close down the project was taken only after a thorough assessment by a most technically competent authority in that field of knowledge. The reasons he gave for that act were so ridiculous that one finds it very hard to believe that a man of his scientific standing could do a thing like that.

For the purpose of a fair intellectual debate, it has become necessary to make available to the reader, the four main points contained in the recommendations taken from a certified copy of the report kept by the National Archives of Ghana. The following therefore are the main points: 

“The scientific research and applications to which the reactor could usefully be put, if completed, can all be carried out by purchasing radioactive isotopes and equipment at only a fraction of the cost of building and operation the reactor”.

The number of scientists who could be required to operate a reactor and laboratories would be about one-third of the total number of physicists and chemists in Ghana today”. “In view of the capacity of the Volta Hydroelectric project, for some twenty years to come, a reactor is unlikely to be necessary for the purpose of producing power. A research reactor is not therefore required for technological development of nuclear power”.

Taking account of the present state of scientific and technological development potentialities of Ghana, the scarcity of high level scientific manpower, and the need for more financial support for research in agriculture, health, and other fields  contributing directly to the economic development of Ghana, I consider that the scientific and technological case for proceeding with the reactor project is extremely weak at least for the next ten to twenty years”.
This is a big insult to the intelligence of the good people of Ghana, which ought to have been exposed long time ago by scholars and opinion leader of this country as fraudulent and inimical to our country’s interests. This precisely was what we had expected our senior colleagues of the pen to do in 1967.

As we all know, no branch of science and technology can influence the industrial might of a country to any extent until it has well developed industrial base. For example, in spite of its incomparable merits and advantages, atomic energy would have remained a laboratory miracle for a long time if its development and progress had not been put on a powerful technical and industrial basis  not only in the industries directly linked with it, but also in many other ones.

Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah
 Almost all the older branches of science and technology are occupied to some degree or another with atomic problems (chemistry, metallurgy medicine, biology and so on). In fact, experts now agree that it is almost easier to count the fields that have not been enriched by the advances of nuclear physics than to make those where they have already found wide application.

In recent years, the world has witnessed an impressive demonstration of the global significance of nuclear physical research and its profound influence on technological progress. Nuclear physics has served as the starting point of many radical changes that have taken place as a result of harnessing nuclear energy in many fields. 

It is an industry that employs and trains great many highly qualified people of the most varied of professions. The 25MW capacity reactor to be installed at Kwabenya before the 1966 coup was purely a research reactor and not for immediate generation of electricity. It was to help in creating and accelerating the country’s scientific and technological capacity to enable it tackle problems of any degree of complexity.  It was also to provide the necessary technological base for building and operating nuclear power reactors. To say therefore that we should not have our own reactor, but purchase the radioactive isotopes and equipment from the United Kingdom was to say the least an insult to our country and its people.

The second point was equally groundless and could not hold even drop of water, especially when he was clearly aware of the fact that the whole package contained a programme for the training of the required Ghanaian scientific manpower of the project by the Soviet Government.  After the technical aid agreement for the building of the Nuclear Research Centre was signed at the end of the 1950s, a radioactive fallout station was built in Ghana with Soviet assistance and was put in service in April 1965. This station was maned by Ghanaian scientists trained in the USSR.

Another example was the Volta River Project at Akosombo. When the construction of the dam began; Ghana had no engineering and technical manpower to man such a project. But a number of Ghanaians were quickly sent abroad to train for that purpose, and when in 1970, the then Prime Minister Dr. Busia visited the dam, he expressed surprise according to Ghana Radio, about the fact that he did not see  a single Whiteman there, and that all the engineers and technicians operating these gigantic installations were Ghanaians.
In a message he left behind in the Visitor’s Book at the Power House, Dr.Busia said: “It us most impressive and heartening to see the large and complicated machinery here being completely run by Ghanaian engineers and technicians”. If any evidence is required that we can master contemporary technology, surely, it is incontrovertibly, given here. WE TOO CAN DO IT “. See Daily Graphic of 7th October 1970, Front page.

This coming from Dr. Busia in particular is very significant in view of his opposition to the accelerated scientific and technological development programme  of Dr. Kwame  Nkrumah, and who was also said to have opposed the construction of the very dam he visited. Dr. Busia was also the chairman of the political committee of the NLC, the very government which was responsible for the present scientific and technological backwardness of the country. But from this statement, it is clear that Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia began to see things in a different light when he became the prime Minister of Ghana.

While we believe that the activities of the social scientists connected with what happened could have been a result of their ignorance mistaken for knowledge, we are unable to accept that this explanation applies also to the natural scientists  and engineers, and are therefore inclined to believe in their criminal liability. This is because   by the nature of the training of scientists and engineers, gaps of these magnitudes can simply not exist in their understanding of such vital issues as the strategic importance of nuclear technology for the economic survival of any country, irrespective of whether they are citizens of an underdeveloped country, or of a developed country.

On the third point, I can express surprise that a man of Sir Cockcroft’s scientific standing could make such recommendations without any thought of its effect on his own reputation and prestige. Sir John Cockcroft became famous when he and the Irish physicist, Ernest Walton, reported in 1932 an experiment consisted in using protons accelerated in accelerating tube to an energy of the order of 0.125Me V, in a narrow beam to bombard a target made in Lithium -7. I read about it in a scientific journal in 1970.

Take for example, at the time of this so –called report, Valco was taking Two-third of the electric power generated by the dam. And with the construction of the second dam at Kpong which has brought the combined capacity of the two dams to 1100MW, Valco alone is now taking about 50% of the entire power generated. 9% is supplied to Togo and Benin, leaving 41% to the rest of the country.

The Akosombo Dam
What this means is that proper industrial development of this country has been frozen for the past quarter of the century. This is because this so-called report sought to prevent and has actually prevented the possibility of installing any industrial plant with the power rating of that Valco in Ghana from 1967 to date. It has to date, effectively frustrated the establishment of major key industries such as iron and steel, and other strategic energy intensive industries in Ghana.

According to a paper prepared by Dr. R.P. Baffour, a copy of which is in my possession, it became known in 1977 that the V.R.A. would not be able to supply only 130MW of power required by the Integrated Iron and Steel Project at Opon Manse in the Western Region, and even with the construction of the second dam at Kpong, the situation would still not change much. This is a spectacular proof of the economic inimicality of this so-called report to the country and its people.

The forth point has actually reinforced the suspicion many people have to the effect that the Western industrialized nations use all sorts of crude methods to try to fool the developing countries into believing that scientific research is a waste of money and that those countries engaged in advanced scientific research have excess money for which they have very little use, and not out of economic and technological necessity. It was clearly meant to prevent scientific and technological development of this country.

The USA for example has been facing major trade deficits for years, and yet it has drawn up a most ambitious space programme which was announced recently, and has even purchased a completely new generation of advanced nuclear reactor from the former Soviet Union for this purpose.

This is not regarded as a wasteful expenditure because those in the correct picture of world events know very well that many branches of technology would never have achieved their present spectacular successes without the help of space research. From the above explanation, it is no longer difficult to understand the motive by which Sir Cockcroft’s whole mission to Ghana from the United Kingdom was guided.

Many reasons have been given for the coup of 1966 which overthrew the government Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, except the real reasons which have been hidden from the light of day for many years. What has now come to light out of many reasons which include Washington’s ambition to establish its domination in Africa, the Ghana Atomic Energy Project was the most immediate cause of the coup.

The whole tragedy may have been caused by fear of Kwame Nkrumah’s intention to develop nuclear weapons. As a prominent scholar once put it: “The greatest enemy of trust is fear, and it makes no difference whether that fear is baseless or well-founded”. THE Western countries regarded the Ghana Atomic Energy Project as an intolerable challenge which must not be allowed to materialize, and since they had no other way of stopping the project while Nkrumah was still in the saddle of power, because of the fact that the technology for its realization was Soviet, over which they had no control, they had no alternative, but at act as they did, and to act immediately.

Ghana was the first of modern Africa’s new states and Kwame Nkrumah the leader to whom all Africans looked with new hope. The enormity of his political influence on the whole continent of Africa, and the depth  of thinking behind his strategic development programmes were already viewed with alarm by the west, and his attempt to lay hands on nuclear technology was the last drop that caused the western world’s cup of patience to overflow.

Unfortunately, there has been a deeply misguided belief that Kwame Nkrumah was too far ahead of his time. This statement is usually meant not to vindicate him by those who make them and to now admit their own unacceptable lag behind events in the world on account of which we have suffered this tragedy, but to give the impression that Kwame Nkrumah’s ideas were not applicable at the time of their statement, because the people were not educated enough to understand him, but that they could become operational only at a future stage of civilization.

The fallacy of this statement becomes immediately clear when we have a look at the calibre of people who were the brains behind the opposition of Kwame Nkrumah and his strategic development programmes which aroused the indignation of the Western industrialized countries for reasons which should now be very clear to our people.

A prominent philosopher once said: unlike other living  beings, man lives not only in the present, but also in the future, or perhaps we should more appropriately say, not so much in the present as in the future. This is why individuals and a whole civilization can be judges by their conception of the future.

The present technological might of the USA and the other powerful industrial nations is a direct result of the heavy investment in advanced scientific research in the past. To achieve economic self-reliance, it is necessary to resolve three interconnected problems: to develop a modern industrial system, to create a national scientific potential, and to train specialists. And all these were among the top priority items in the Nkrumah’s strategic development programme  before his overthrow in 1966.

A considerable amount of information is needed to give the Ghanaian public a better perspective and better factual basis for forming its attitude to the development of nuclear technology in the country. This statement must not be interpreted to mean a confirmation of the idea of Kwame Nkrumah being too far ahead of his time. An idea, the employment of which seems to provide a refuge for traitors and puppet intellectuals who have betrayed their own people to evade the possibility of being called upon to account for their conduct. What I really mean is the need to explain and refute the false propaganda.

The former Soviet Union was the first country in the world to develop peaceful use of nuclear energy when in June 1954, the world’s first nuclear power station was put in operation in Obninsk near Moscow, where a nuclear reactor was installed instead of a conventional steam boiler. Thermal energy was thus obtained by fissioning uranium 235 nuclei in an atomic pile to convert the resultant energy into electricity, like at conventional power stations.

Some 15-20 years ago, there was no other country in the world with stronger antinuclear sentiment than Japan, which is natural since Japan had experienced the horror of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But today, the commonsense has prevailed, and nuclear power engineering is boosting in Japan. The Fukushima nuclear power station which has 10 unit of 9 million KW, is among the largest in the would.

By 1989, there were 429 nuclear power stations in operation in 26 countries around the world. The following is the breakdown of the countries involved.
1.       USA            = 108                10. S. KOREA                  =  8              19. HUNGARY          =  4                               
2.      USSR           =  56                11. CZECHOSLOVAKIA  =  8               20. ITALY                  =  2
3.      FRANCE      =  55                12. BELGIUM                  =  7               21. ARGENTINA      =  2
4.      BRITAIN     =  40                 13. TAIWAN                    =  6               22.NETHERLANDS =  2
5.      JAPAN         = 38                 14. INDIA                         =  6               23. S. AFRICA           =  2
6.      GERMANY  = 23                 15. SWITZERLAND          =  5              24. BRAZIL                =  1
7.      CANADA     = 18                 16. GDR                            = 5                25. PAKISTAN          =  1
8.     SWEDEN     = 12                 17. BULGARIA                 =  5               26. YOGOSLAVIA     =  1
9.      SPAIN          = 10                 18. FINLAND                    =  4

There were also by 1989, 105 under construction around the world out of which the USSR alone had 26.The people’s Republic of China, on 15th December 1991 began operation of her own design of nuclear power station.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, these nuclear power stations represented 15.5% of the total power supply in the world at that time. Nuclear energy form a higher percentage of the energy supply in France 67% and Belgium 69%. Britain which has almost the same geographical size as Ghana and which according to our records was responsible for the close down of Ghana’s nuclear programme after the 1966 coup now has 40 nuclear powere stations which form nearly twenty percent of her energy supply.
The only realistic alternative to nuclear engineering in the coming 50-100 years is coal. But electricity generated by nuclear power station built in the 1990’s will continue to cost 30 – 50% less than energy produced by coal burning power supply. 


Ghana President John Mahama, an avowed Nkrumaist
 According to the report, if nuclear engineering is slowed down, many countries including the USA would be unable to retain their present–day living standards. Therefore, if the living standard in developed industrialized countries require new energy sources , why should any country try to prevent a country like Ghana from developing its own?

Another report by top nuclear scientists say that advances in nuclear engineering weaken competition over organic raw materials, promote a stable world economy and in the final analysis strengthen international security. This is because, if more electricity is to be generated by using only conventional sources, the likelihood of international conflicts involving fuel and raw materials would grow. This explains why nuclear engineering in this sense plays a stabilizing role in the world.  

According to current estimates, 200  - 250 million tons  of ash about  60 million tons of sulphur dioxide are discharged every year into the atmosphere as a result of the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas, and the year 2000 these figures could rise to 1.5 thousand million and 400 million tons, respectively.

Besides large amounts of nitrogen and carbon oxides, free radicals and other health – hazardous admixtures, including radioactive elements, enter the atmosphere. Again, discharge from thermal power plants contains radioactive components, whose concentrations are not as high and therefore are still safe. With increase in the mass of burnt fuel, the radioactive discharge into the atmosphere from thermal power plants grow. But scientific study has shown that the radiation dose from a normally operating nuclear power station (1 million k W) is at least 1,0000 times lower than that from the natural radiation background.

Today, the developing countries’ advance along the road of developed nations necessarily requires generating and consuming many more power than now. Up to now, the energy infrastructure in this country is far from satisfactory. Experts say that how the developing countries’ power industries will develop is crucial for their economic and social progress.
The energy question is one important problem facing every country which wants to develop, including the most technologically advanced countries on Earth. Both the USA and the former Soviet Union for example, have colossal sources of electric power and yet the development of new sources of energy still remains important part of their strategic development programmes.

It is a well known fact that efficiency of industry depends primarily on its supply of electricity per worker. Electrification paved the way to further social, economic, scientific and technological progress. It prepared the soil for automation.

One of Kwame Nkrumah’s preoccupations was the electrification of the whole country, for, he said:”Without abundant electric power, large scale industrialization such as we envisaged was impossible.” Electric power supply is a decisive factor in the development of any modern economy. It is one of the principal indices of economic development of a country and reflects the total state of its productive forces. Without power supply it will be impossible to transform the enormous natural resources of the country by modern technology for worldwide distribution.

Since the overthrow of the first republic in 1966, electricity supply to the rural areas has been used for cheap political campaign to the extent that impression has now been created that supply of electricity to the rural areas constitute a kind of generosity of government for which the people of the given area must express their gratitude in the form of political support for the party or government.

It is sad that the electrification programme so vital for the country’s industrial development should be badly misunderstood  and thereby misused that way. We need to recognize the impossibility of tackling the problem of underdevelopment which is the most dangerous threat to the stability of every government without electrification of the whole country. Electricity supply therefore, is not a Christmas gift from government, but an indispensable prerequisite for national development.

This explains why the government of the first republic regarded electrification of the whole country as   one of the top priority components of its strategic  development programme. For this reasons, it was planned to build five hydroelectric power stations at Akosombo, Bui, Kpong, and one each on the Ankobra and Tano rivers. There was also a future plan to build one nuclear and one thermal power station.

Under this electrification programme, it was clearly understood that modern economic development programme based on the latest scientific and technological achievements requires very high electric power station reliability, because interruption in power supply not only affects the industries it serves, but also impairs the efficiency of the stations itself.
To solve this problem, these separate stations were to be integrated into power systems to ensure continued supply and reduce the generating capacity reserve per unit. Integration of separate systems represents a higher stage in scientific and technological development of power engineering.

Because this integration would ensure rational distribution of loads, and the switching of surplus capacity into free channels which makes it possible at any moment to resist the elemental force of electric flooding.

Electrical and electronic technology has become major fields of study since the seventh decade of the twentieth century. In electricity and electronics, man has found the energy and tools of the future. We are however aware that already today, the advance in these technologies are breathtaking and yet much more remains to be discovered, analyzed and investigated by future generations. 

A prominent physicist once stated that: “In spite of its omnipresence, in spite of the fact that for over half a century electricity has become more and more pressed into the industrial service of mankind, it remains  precisely that form of motion the nature of which is still enveloped in the greatest obscurity.

A brief explanation of this statement is that no scientist knows yet the exact nature of the electric charge carried by the electrons and protons. But we do know that these charges are of opposite character and give rise to invisible forces acting in the space around each particle. It is through the action of these invisible electric forces that we can detect the presence of an electric charge.

In a bid to solve their energy problems, the most technologically advanced countries are now establishing a factory whose raw materials will be brought from the moon. Under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, USA, the CIS, Japan and the Euratom – the atomic association of the European Economic Community, are conducting a joint research to build a thermonuclear reactor.

The group adopted the Russian Tokamak thermonuclear reactor. At first, they were vied with by the American Stellarators, but after they they were put to test, the group including the US scientists adopted the Tokamak.

It is believed that the operational safety and the absence of long-lived radioactive wastes in the fuel cycle are some of the main advantages of thermonuclear energy. A thermonuclear power plant will have no long-lived isotopes apart from tritium, which in principle can be replaced with non radioactive Helium-3. This also is incredibly rare on our planet, but scientists are not worried because of their awareness of the fact that even the most hopeless problems collapse if attacked by the entire world scientific community.  

According to reports scientists have now discovered that a vast of this material is contained in lunar dust, and plans are advanced to deliver it from the moon. And calculations have already shown that journeys for the raw material would be quite profitable.

The main reason for boosting energy production is the direct link between living standards and per capita power supply. The generally recognized per capita energy consumption norm is 10 KW, and this has been reached in only few industrially advanced countries.

In Ghana, the combined electricity generating capacity of the two hydroelectric power stations is 1100 MW. If we take the present population as 15 million, then our energy consumption per capita is 0.073 KW. In mathematical terms, we are about 137 times below the above-mentioned level. This demonstrates the basic fallacy in the assertion by many Ghanaians including some in high positions that Ghana has abundant source of electrical energy.

If we want to maintain our presently obsolete scientific and technological base of our country’s economy, then that is another matter, otherwise it is clearly inadequate. What I want to put across is that we are terribly behind time, but we seem to be quite happy with the pace at which we are moving, and this is extremely dangerous for our country.
The gravity of our present plights have put before us a clear choice which was unclear before – either we make a running jump, or accept the cost of its alternative.

Commenting on the whole situation, Kwame Nkrumah writes: “The coup d’etat on its surface was a military revolt against me and what I stood for. If it is analysed more deeply, however, it is a mark of the breakdown of the western attempt to influence and control Africa. The western countries having failed to control democratically supported African  governments, were forced into the final extremity of substituting regimes which depended upon no other mandate than the weapons which they held in their hands. Such puppet government cannot survive for long either in Ghana or elsewhere in Africa. The prosperity of the Western world at the moment depends upon exploiting less developed countries.

Each year the western world pays less for its imports and each year charge more for its exports. Those who make our “coups “believe, however, or at least pretend to believe, that if they copy, or claim to copy, the outward image of the Western world, then – in some miraculous way – they will secure the advantages which the Western world enjoys. The contrary is the case. The individuals who have made the counter-revolutions from Saigon to Sierra Leone are dependent for their political existence upon western support. The countries over which they temporarily obtain control are therefore exploited the more viciously.” See Days In Ghana. Page 72.

The people of this country are getting to realize very rapidly that the accelerated scientific and technological development programme started by Kwame Nkrumah will ultimately be a decisive  factor in overcoming the critical situation that hold back the progress of this land of  their birth.

A great scholar observed that:”The true significance of historical events and of the contributions made by prominent personalities to the development of civilization are fully revealed only in the course of time. With the passage of years they do not fade away, on the contrary, they appear before us in their genuine dimensions, giving us increasingly greater grounds to appreciate their impact on the directions and rates of social progress. It becomes ever more apparent that without the activities of these personalities, the subsequent historical progress would have taken a much different trajectory.”

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