About a year ago, Kenya announced plans for its first nuclear power plant to be built in Siaya County, on the shores of Lake Victoria. However, following local protests, Kenya’s state-run Nuclear Power and Energy Agency (NuPEA) announced plans to conduct “a robust, transparent, and multi-layered educational campaign” to address concerns.
The facility would produce roughly 2,000 megawatts of energy and cost roughly KSh500 billion ($3.85 billion) to build.
“As the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency, we hear and respect the voices of the residents of Siaya. Public participation is not a mere procedural formality. It is a constitutional right,” the agency said in a statement shared on social media. The agency said the project wouldn’t proceed “without the broad informed consent of the community.”
The statement came two days after protests from residents living near the proposed nuclear power project. They voiced concerns about potential nuclear contamination and ecological risks to Africa’s largest fresh-water lake. Many locals depend on the lake for food and their livelihoods.
Kenya’s President William Ruto has previously assured the public that the flagship energy project will be safe.
Power Shift Africa (PSA), a Pan-African think tank focused on climate change, has condemned the proposed shift toward nuclear energy, saying it risks diverting attention and resources from Kenya’s readily available renewable energy solutions, which are cleaner and safer.
In a statement sent to Mongabay, PSA Director Mohamed Adow said a nuclear facility can take more than a decade to become operational. “For comparison, the 55MW solar plant in Garissa [Kenya] took only one year to finalize. If we really need to get this electricity to people at record speeds, then we have to look no further than renewables.”
The project was initially earmarked for Kilifi County, on Kenya’s coast, but after Kilifi residents rejected the plan, the government shifted to the new site in Siaya County.
NuPEA has previously held stakeholder consultations with communities in Siaya County to sell the idea of a nuclear power project. They’ve also been working to shore up national political support. In February, a delegation from NuPEA and the Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen) paid a courtesy call to the Speaker of the National Assembly to discuss the Nuclear Regulatory Act and strengthen “institutional collaboration and policy support for the nuclear power program.”
However, Adow warned nuclear contamination in Lake Victoria would be devastating. He pointed to a 2024 report by The Council on Strategic Risks, which, he said, found that “biodiversity collapse in the Lake Victoria Basin could trigger conflict, economic instability, migration and insecurity across East Africa.”
“Already, declining fish stocks, pollution and environmental degradation are threatening livelihoods, social cohesion and regional stability, and the millions who live around this lake need ecological protection, not a monument to an energy Baal,” Adow said.
Banner image: Local residents near Lake Victoria, protesting the planned construction of a nuclear power project on May 21, 2026. Picture sourced from social media.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
