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In a briefing on Monday, 12 August, 2024, Minister of Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa revealed that South Africa’s nuclear ambitions are still being debated internally despite the procurement process getting the green light months ago. He emphasised that he wants to ensure the process is not “soiled” by a lack of transparency.
The minister also lauded the successes the generation division at Eskom has seen, with the country not experiencing load shedding for 138 days.
“We are seeing an exceptional performance on the generation side. It’s a result of the measures that have been put into place. This has been engineered, it’s orchestrated, it’s deliberate and, of course, all of these things are coming together.”
“It’s a constellation of the efforts, the people issues, the engineering issues, the financing issues, and also addressing issues of malfeasance across the board at Eskom.”
Looming threat
He underscored that the country is not yet out of the woods and that load shedding remains a threat.
Speaking about Koeberg Power Station, the minister said “We’re hoping to get an extension of life of Koeberg unit number two. We succeeded on unit number one. It’s not automatic. We are not complacent doing everything by the book, ensuring that they cross all the Ts, dot all the Is, and be diligent in what we submit to the nuclear regulator of the country.”
“We are still optimistic of getting that extension of life for 20 years of Koberg unit number two, which will give us an additional 980 megawatts. So the point I’m making is that we do expect that by the end of August this year, just from the Eskom fleet, we should be getting an additional 2,500 megawatts.”
Asked about the planned expansion of the nuclear fleet, Ramokgopa said that they were refining the procurement framework.
“Yes, I’ve committed to that, I did say we are working on the procurement framework, so it’s an internal conversation on how best to do that,” he said.
He said they wanted to have it done by July, but “having sight of what the team is proposing, we really need to make it more robust”.
At the end of last year, the minister announced that all the “suspensive conditions” preventing the procurement of 2,500MW of nuclear power had been met and that the country would begin the process to procure new nuclear capacity for the first time in decades.
He said that much of what had “soiled” nuclear power in the public imagination, fuelling “misgivings”, was the lack of transparency in the procurement process.
Daily Maverick previously reported that according to a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, then president Jacob Zuma unexpectedly travelled to Russia in August 2014, and that “just three weeks later, in Vienna, South African and Russian representatives signed a formal agreement on strategic nuclear cooperation”.
The deal, expected to cost the taxpayer hundreds of billions of rand, was eventually overturned by the courts for having a flawed, opaque public consultation process.
It is precisely this type of situation that Ramokgopa seeks to avoid.
“So the technical and scientific basis of nuclear (power) is established, and so the issue is the process of procurement and the transparency of that process. When I say we must build every step of the way the transparency of the process without compromising the process itself, by that I mean there could be information that can’t be shared publicly and it could be proprietary information.
‘The science is established’
“But with regards to what is the cost to the country relative to other forms, what is the opportunity cost of going this route, what does it mean – that will be shared with the country. I’m making that undertaking, that we will do because I think this process fails and succeeds on the basis of the transparency component. The science is established, every serious scientist will tell you ‘no, this is clean, more efficient’ and from an operational point of view, cheaper, but from a finance point of view, the capital cost could be prohibitive,” said Ramokgopa.
Eskom is also broadly supportive of plans to increase the role of nuclear power in the country’s energy mix. In response to questions from Daily Maverick, the utility’s media desk said that “both the IRP2019 and the IRP2023 reflect additional nuclear capacity beyond Koeberg, and nuclear is recognised as a means to support the move towards a low carbon energy supply. The safe operating history of Koeberg has demonstrated that Eskom has the capability to safely and reliably manage nuclear (power plants), and it has established a good base upon which the nuclear programme in South Africa can be expanded.”
“Eskom is supportive of the government initiative to procure an additional 2500MW, and sees itself as the owner/operator of such plants as specified in the nuclear policy. Eskom has continued over the years to maintain and develop potential sites on which additional nuclear generation capacity could be built.” DM
