Why Shouldn’t Tunisia Go Nuclear?

The nuclear option was suggested since the late 60’s. Bechir Turki, a Tunisian nuclear physicist and one of the most prominent scientists in his field at that time, came up with a fully developed plan to Bourguiba who just found it silly. The report ended up in the trash bin on the basis that Tunisia’s strategy was “We don’t need any headaches from the Big Powers”.

Why are we now considering the option again? Well! Obviously for political reasons (again) not having anything to do with an economically/environmentally-driven vision whatsoever! In a word, we're doing it just to make Uncle Sam happy and for the sake of Lella Condie's black eyes. Looks like those I-shoot-the-dog guys at the white house met and thought: “Hmmm! Instead of having a headache every now and then with a trouble making nation like Iran over nuclear weapons, let’s just give the Middle East the pacific nuclear energy (but not the technology) and control the uranium flow without which the whole chain is crippled.” Dependency again and again!

Germany boasts the best brains in atomic energy, yet there is a strong opposition exercised by the Greens. Where has our Green party been when those announcements were made? (yfassessou fil fool lakhdir I guess). We had enough of obsolete decisions going for obsolete strategies when other nations are divesting, packing off and heading for something else somewhere else. The world (the smart and civilized world) is going bio, the world is going green, the world is going sustainability so please enough of this nonsense. Tunisia going atomic? Get out!

I’m not dwarfing our competencies in the field. On the contrary, we have some established scientists and engineers in the field. I even know the very person –a Tunisian- who taught Ahmed Zweil himself and do know that the Nuclear Studies Option has been shut down a couple of years ago in the engineering school of Monastir and that most of the faculty went abroad then. Isn’t it weird for a country planning to harness the atom for its energy needs?

Tunisia should go Renewable! For god’s sake, the solution is staring at us! There’s everything it takes out there! And for just a moment let’s try to do our own research for our own good: we have sand in the desert, wind energy along our coasts, and absolutely no paucity when it comes to solar energy (an average of over 5000 sun-hours yearly). This is not to mention other hidden resources here and there: biomass for instance (Il Fitoura mte3 Izzitoun, wheat/barley waste). I even believe we can extract something out of the waste of processed phosphate in the Metaloui area and from the landfills around the capital.

A series of questions has to be asked to those guys who proudly delivered empty speeches about nuclear energy in Tunisia without understanding a damn thing of the whole affair: Where are you gonna get the Uranium from? How are you gonna transport it to the plant in a small city?!! Can you afford the overall inherent cost? Aren’t you concerned about safety issues in an environment (let’s state it bluntly) notorious for its great attachment to the tea kettle? The tea kettle would kill us ultimately and sincerely, I don't wanna Ben Arous to be another Chernobyl…

After all, we are a small country and our energy demand is not - by any considerations - bigger than that of Denmark so just go renewable (yar7im waldikom), it will cost you less both in upfront cost and maintenance.