You may know South Africa as a barren, dry, wasteland of desert, but what you might not know, is the gradually increasing need for power. As South Africa increases its population, its old ways of harnessing power and electricity are becoming outdated and ineffective. The previous source of power was created though the burning of coal at fossil fuel burning stations. The depletion of coal has come to the need of a new source of power. Soon after burning coal became a burden and nearly impossible, because of the distance that the coal was needed to be transferred from, scientists turned to nuclear power. A power plant powered by nuclear energy has recently been constructed in Cape Town, South Africa, and is an excellent, efficient source of clean power. However, another plant is wanted to be built in Port Elizabeth.
Port Elizabeth is a fairly large city on the southern coast of South Africa that takes in a huge profit through fishing. It is undeniably true that South Africa, along with Port Elizabeth, needs more power, but it is where the new source of power will be located. If a new Nuclear Power Plant will be constructed in the town of Port Elizabeth, it will affect its surroundings in a bad way. No matter how clean the companies claim these new sources of power are, there are always minor disadvantages that over time, will affect the surroundings around the power plants drastically.
As you most likely know, here in San Clemente, California, we have a Nuclear Power Plant of our own, just south of Basilone Road. What many people do not know about this plant is that over a period of time from the day this building was constructed until today, it has been slowly damaging the reef not too far of the shore of this beach city. The result of the affect on the reef left many fish and other sea wildlife homeless, which ultimately decreased the population of the surrounding ocean in Southern California.
Although this new source of power might not affect South Africa in the same way as it affected Southern California, or even at all, we all need to take in to account all the factors and results whether good or bad that this idea could bring. There are so many different factors that come into play when designing a major improvement that will single handedly change the lifestyle of huge amounts of people, and the environment, along with the population of the sea over time.
I believe this Nuclear Power Plant should be built In South Africa, but not in Port Elizabeth. If the Plant was built in some other region that one close to the ocean, it probably will not have as much as a devastating effect on the environment and wildlife, but still improve the production of power in an efficient way. I would hate to see such a diverse region lose such an important part of the lifestyle of many natives.