The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, has ordered that the Ghana Nuclear Power Programme Organisation (GNPPO) be transferred from the Ministry of Energy to the Office of the President, World Nuclear News has reported. This was, he said in his statement, “to enhance proper coordination among the key institutions already established”.

In 2008, the then Ghanaian government decided that nuclear power should form part of the country’s future energy mix. This led to the formation of the GNPPO in 2012, and in 2013 the country formally submitted a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declaring its intention of developing a peaceful nuclear energy programme.

Nuclear technology is not new to Ghana. The Ghana Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1963 and has been operating a Chinese-supplied 30 kW Miniature Neutron Source Reactor since 1994, designated Ghana Research Reactor-1. In 2016 this was converted so that it could use low enriched uranium fuel in place of the previous highly enriched uranium fuel that it had previously needed.

By early 2015, Ghana had signed or ratified several IAEA conventions. In August of that year, the country’s Parliament passed the Nuclear Regulatory Power Act, setting up an independent nuclear regulator, which came into operation at the start of 2016. The IAEA has a ‘milestones’ approach to the development of nuclear energy in ‘emerging nuclear countries’ such as Ghana. Consequently, in January 2017, Ghana hosted an IAEA Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) mission. A follow-up INIR mission visited the country in October 2019, and reported good progress in the implementation of the recommendations made by the first IAEA mission. In 2020, Ghana passed the IAEA’s first pre-project milestone.

In his statement, President Akufo-Addo assured that the government was committed to “transparency, adherence to the strict standards of safety, security, and accountability in the peaceful uses of nuclear technology and [will] continue with its efforts to implement the nuclear power programme in the subsequent phases in the development of the programme by using nuclear technology to generate electricity to accelerate national development and industrialisation”.

While the GNPPO is responsible for all aspects of the nuclear energy programme, the oversight of the construction and operation of the planned nuclear power plant (NPP) is the responsibility of Nuclear Power Ghana, set up in 2018 and registered as a company in 2019. Last year, Ghana issued a Request for Interest for its first NPP. Five vendors responded, from Canada, (South) Korea, Russia and the US. It is expected that this first Ghanaian NPP will have a capacity of 1 GWe, and that a contract will be signed in 2024 or 2025.

Further, earlier this year, the US government stated that it would support Ghana’s adoption of small modular nuclear reactor technology. This would be done through the US State Department’s Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology programme. (With regard to the US, last week California State legislators overwhelmingly voted to extend the life of that State’s only NPP, Diablo Canyon, until 2030; it had been meant to shut down by 2025.)