The Executive Director of Nuclear Power Ghana (NPG), Dr. Stephen Yamoah, has disclosed that his outfit is undergoing a vendor engagement process as part of efforts in seeking further financial analysis towards the successful fruition of the Ghana nuclear programme.
He said the vendor engagement process will assist NPG and other players to ascertain financial and technical information that will guide their action in the subsequent phases of the project.
“We see the vendor engagement as very critical. If we are able to identify the vendor early, it makes it easy to fit in other things such as training, a very important aspect of the process. We will train people and these training will take a long time, and that is one reason why the nuclear project is quite long. So as fast as we identify the vendor, it puts us ahead of the processes,” he said.
According to him, the vendor engagement came on the back of a program comprehensive report that was earlier submitted to government, which then gave the go ahead for the financial analysis.
“We’ve completed phase one and the report was put together to the government to inform it on what has been done and to make some recommendations. Government accepted the report and has requested that we do some further financial analysis of the project. In doing those further analysis we have set out to do an engagement.
We also issued request for information through ministry of energy and we have received responses from over ten companies, both large reactor and small modular reactors, and we are at the stage of reviewing and evaluating the responses to make recommendations to government. Cabinet set up an inter-ministerial committee to see to the further analysis of the financials, of which my organisation is serving as a technical support,” he said.
Dr. Yamoah said deciding on a vendor means there’s an understanding of how financing is going to be arranged for the project, and further means Ghana has selected a technology.
The selected vendor will, however, work with Ghana’s proposed owner-operator for the construction of the power plant in accordance with specifications and other technical considerations suitable in the country.
Speaking about what the country should expect from the outcome, he said a critical feature that would be guaranteed is a reliable and affordable electricity.
“We are talking about a technology for electricity that is more reliable, affordable and exactly what the industry require. A technology that will make the tariff go down so that industries can have competitive production knowing well that when the cost of power is high it reflects on the cost of the products in the country,” he said.
He also assured that the process will create job opportunities that won’t be limited to one class of professionals only.
