Ammon News - Mohammed Hussein boasts a long lineage of ancestors from the Bani Sakher tribe in the arid central Jordanian desert, who have defended the land from invaders, including rival tribes, Ottoman troops and British forces.

Hamad says he is ready to take up the fight once again to defend the region against the latest threat: nuclear power.

"If the government believes it can build a reactor here and we will stay silent, it has just made its biggest mistake in the history of Jordan," Hamad told dpa.

"We, Bedouins, have defended Jordan against wars and conspiracies- we will not let Jordan become another Fukushima," he said, referring to the nuclear disaster in Japan.

Hamad is one of hundreds of residents in the desert area of Qusayr Amra - the planned site for Jordan-s first nuclear reactor and home to one of the country’s largest underground water reservoirs.

Local tribes who depend on the land to graze livestock and for agriculture say the power plant threatens the environment and their livelihoods.

The government announced last month that it had selected Russian state-owned firm Rosatom to construct two 1,000 Megawatt reactors in the Jordanian desert within a decade.

Officials say the plan will solve chronic energy shortages in Jordan, which imports 97 per cent of its energy needs at a cost of more than one-fifth of the country's gross domestic product and whose debt stands at more than 1.8 billion dollars.

Under the scheme, the two reactors are to provide 40 per cent of Jordan's electricity demand upon their completion in 2021.

"With this agreement, we will not only have a secure and stable electricity source, but a secure and stable electricity source that is cheaper than fossil fuels and competitive with oils shale and renewable energy," Khaeld Toukan, the head of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC), said upon unveiling the deal.

"This programme is not just an energy programme but a programme for the future of Jordan."

Critics accuse the government of being blinded by nuclear ambition and overlooking the project's staggering economic, social and environmental costs.

Key concerns include the financial feasibility of the mega-project, under which the Russian firm has agreed to shoulder 49 per cent of the 10-billion-dollar estimated price tag.

"When they are talking about costs, they are not talking about decommissioning costs, management costs and insurance costs," says Malek Kabiriti, an ex-energy minister, who claimed to have received "conflicting numbers" on the cost.

"At the end of the day, this project may cost Jordan more than 50 billion dollars, but they are too afraid to tell the public."

Environmentalists have also called into question the plans for cooling the reactors, which will require up to 500 million cubic metres of water annually, an amount detractors say Jordan, the world's fourth water-poorest nation, can ill afford.

"Water is our scarcest resource and they want to build the most water-intensive project possible," Raouf Dabbas, an environmentalist and a consultant at the Environment Ministry, told dpa.

"How can we cool reactors in the desert when we barely have enough to irrigate our crops?"

In order to solve water woes, atomic energy officials propose to cool the planned reactors with recycled wastewater from a nearby treatment plant in the desert.

Experts say the proposal has several drawbacks. The bulk of Jordan's recycled wastewater is reserved for agriculture, while out of the 430 active nuclear reactors in world, only one - the Paolo Verde plant in Arizona - relies on treated wastewater for cooling.

But perhaps the greatest point of contention remains the planned site for the twin reactor s- the Qusayr Amra region, some 110 kilometres east of the capital Amman and a few kilometres away from the oasis of Azraq.

JAEC officials listed two main factors for their selection: a 30-kilometre distance between the site and the nearest residential area; and proximity to the Khirbet Samra Wastewater Treatment Plant, soon to be the reactors' main source for water cooling.

The country's influential Bani Sakher tribe has declared a "war of resistance" against the nuclear programme, vowing to prevent JAEC or construction crews from reaching the desert.

"We love Jordan too much to let it go nuclear," said Shayesh Nayef Khraysheh, a former lawmaker and the tribe's leader.

"And we are ready to risk our lives for our homeland."


* Business Ghana