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Fe₂O₃.

Before Jamaica proceeds any further, let that formula sit on the page like a small examination question. What is it? What does it signify? Why should it trouble two powerful Andrews now inviting the country to imagine nuclear salvation?

Fe₂O₃ is iron(III) oxide: rust. Fool’s gold is different. It is mainly iron pyrite, FeS₂, the bright mineral that has deceived hurried prospectors because it glitters convincingly without possessing gold’s value. The distinction matters. Jamaica’s small modular reactor (SMR) adventure may enter public discussion shining like FeS₂ and leave the taxpayer holding Fe₂O₃: not treasure, but corrosion.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has described SMRs as potentially safer, adaptable and cost-effective for small countries. Science and Technology Minister Andrew Wheatley has gone further, asserting that Jamaica’s nuclear assessments converge on SMRs, possibly around 100 megawatts, and favour a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer arrangement supported by a power-purchase agreement. The rhetorical package is polished: clean baseload, energy security, private capital, technological modernity and costs supposedly kept off the Government’s balance sheet.

But finance does not disappear because a liability is placed inside a contract. A long-term power-purchase agreement can transfer construction ownership while transferring market, tariff and demand risk to consumers. “Off balance sheet” is not the same as off the backs of Jamaicans. If a foreign consortium requires guaranteed electricity purchases, indexation, sovereign assurances, foreign-exchange protection or compensation for policy changes, the public obligation merely changes costume.

The first scientific question is not whether nuclear fission can generate electricity. Plainly it can. The question is whether a first-of-a-kind, or near-first-of-a-kind, SMR would be Jamaica’s least-cost, least-risk and most resilient next unit of generation. Those are profoundly different propositions.

FOAK machinery carries learning costs. Designs change. Regulators ask questions not previously answered. Supply chains lack repetition. Specialist labour is scarce. Construction sequencing is untested. Financing prices uncertainty. The promised economies of factory manufacture generally emerge only after multiple standardised units have been ordered, built and operated. Jamaica should not pay pioneer’s prices merely to receive follower’s promises.

Grid arithmetic is equally unforgiving. A 100-megawatt unit would be substantial on an island system of roughly one gigawatt. Its sudden loss would require adequate spinning reserve, fast-ramping generation, storage, transmission strength and protection systems. Nuclear advocates speak lovingly of continuous output; system operators must also contemplate abrupt outage. “Baseload” is not a synonym for resilience. A large inflexible unit can become the contingency around which the rest of a small grid must be expensively organised.

Nor should “small” perform magical work. An SMR remains a nuclear installation requiring an independent regulator, emergency planning, physical security, safeguards, trained operators, quality-assured maintenance, radioactive-waste arrangements, decommissioning finance and credible liability provisions. Jamaica’s successful operation of a tiny research reactor (UWI’S Slow Poke) proves scientific competence; it does not establish readiness to own, regulate and economically absorb a commercial nuclear power programme thousands of times larger.

Then comes geography. Jamaica cannot memorandum away hurricanes, flooding, landslides, coastal exposure, seismicity, salt corrosion, constrained evacuation routes or the institutional disruptions that follow major disasters. None of these automatically prohibits nuclear power. Together, however, they raise the standard of proof. The burden lies upon promoters to publish site-specific hazard analyses, cooling requirements, water-security plans, emergency zones, grid studies, waste pathways and fully risk-adjusted costs before political enthusiasm hardens into procurement.

The alternative is not the crab catcher’s “toachie”. That caricature must be debunked and retired. Jamaica possesses solar, wind, biomass, biogas, small-hydro, efficiency, demand-response, battery and pumped-storage opportunities. Uruguay’s former energy director, Ramón Méndez Galain, has argued that Jamaica can operate entirely on renewables, drawing upon his country’s transformation. Jamaica need not copy Uruguay mechanically; it should learn the larger lesson that diversity, grid intelligence, competitive procurement and disciplined implementation can convert variable resources into dependable systems.

Renewables are variable; demand is variable too. Modern power systems manage both through forecasting, geographic dispersion, storage, flexible generation, smart inverters, stronger transmission, demand management and interconnection where feasible. The serious comparison is therefore not “nuclear reliability versus unreliable renewables”. It is one complete portfolio against another, measured by delivered cost, outage consequences, construction time, foreign-exchange exposure, climate vulnerability and local capability.

Opportunity cost completes the indictment. Every dollar, engineer-hour and ministerial season committed to speculative nuclear preparation is unavailable for repairing transmission, reducing technical losses, accelerating rooftop solar, modernising tariffs, hardening substations, training technicians and installing storage now. Jamaica’s electricity emergency is present tense. A technology perhaps deployable in the 2040s cannot be allowed to distract from investments capable of lowering exposure, improving reliability and creating skilled Jamaican work within this decade at scale.

There is also a governance question. Jamaica signed a nuclear-cooperation memorandum with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories in October 2024. In July 2026, Michael Lee-Chin’s Portland Holdings announced a separate Turkish nuclear-sector partnership. Neither development is itself a reactor, a licence, a bankable feasibility study or a competitive electricity bid. Yet repetition can make exploration sound like inevitability. That is how imagination begins masquerading as policy.

Andrew and Andrew should therefore welcome, not resist, a transparent national test: publish the five programme documents said to support the SMR conclusion; identify the candidate technologies; distinguish operating plants from prototypes; disclose projected overnight cost, financing cost and tariff; model the largest credible grid contingency; specify fuel and waste arrangements; and compare the nuclear pathway against a renewables-plus-flexibility portfolio using identical assumptions.

Until that work is public, FOAK should be read not as an achievement but as a warning label.

The chemistry lesson is simple. FeS₂ can glitter. Fe₂O₃ can even possess an earthy beauty. Neither is Au. Political repetition cannot alter atomic identity; promotional language cannot transmute technical uncertainty into public value. Jamaica must not confuse novelty with progress, an MOU with infrastructure, a private venture with national prudence, or a distant prototype with affordable electricity.

Andrew and Andrew may imagine treasure. Jamaica must demand the assay.