Don’t boast about solar project – Dr Silumbe
By Thandizo Banda
SOLAR energy is an alternative for poor people and should not be a source of prestige for a leadership that focuses on national development through production, says Leadership Movement (LM) president Dr Richard Silumbe.
Yesterday, President Hakainde Hichilema commissioned a US$100 million Chisamba Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Power Project expected to deliver 100 Megawatts (MW) clean electricity to the grid.
However, Dr Silumbe advised the United Party for National Development (UPND) administration to seriously consider moving away from ‘make-shift’ solutions such as the Chisamba Solar Project.
Instead, government should embrace nuclear energy to drive the growth of the productive sector.
Dr Silumbe noted that the current energy crisis could not be sorted out through diversifying to solar energy alone but through several interventions.
He said several countries like Russia,China United States and, most recently, Burkina Faso were now self-sufficient in terms of energy production because they had embraced nuclear energy.
“We have the capacity to produce nuclear energy. We have abundant water bodies for cooling and driving turbines for producing nuclear power. With just a small nuclear plant as a country we can produce up to around 15,000 MW of electricity and forget about all these make-shift plants,” Dr Silumbe said.
He said solar energy had its own challenges.
“With solar energy you have about 15 hours of dormant time between 18:00 and 07:00 hours when the entire solar panel becomes inactive until such a time when there’s enough sunlight,” he said.
Dr Silumbe said it was time government and citizens embraced nuclear energy as one of the solutions to the current energy crisis in the country.
“Russia is using uranium. They have nuclear power plants. The phobia with this government is that it is afraid to utilise this mineral,” he said.
