Nuclear Reactors 298 - Confusion in South Africa's Plans For Nuclear Power Reactors
South Africa has been considering a major move into nuclear power generation. The government has discussed possible contracts with a number of different reactor vendors. There have been scandals involving release of a proposed contract with Russia that would have shielded the Russian manufacturers from liability in case of an accident. The government of S.A. has been reluctant to release budgets that have to do with possible reactor construction projects but there have been estimates of as much as seventy billion dollars. There is a great deal of public resistance to the idea of using nuclear power in S.A.
S.A. needs to expand power generation to support economic development and expansion of housing. Recently, a coal storage silo at the Majuba power station forced the power utility Eskom to schedule a series of power outages. S.A. currently depends on coal as its main source of power. The S.A. Department of Energy released an Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity for 2010-2030 in March of 2011. The plan was to allocate ten percent of new power generation to wind power, eleven percent to solar power and thirteen percent to nuclear power. Coincidentally, the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power station in Japan occurred in March of 2011. This had a global impact on the nuclear power industry and S.A. reevaluated its plans for building nuclear reactors.
The Integrated Resource plan was updated in 2013. The need for nuclear power was questioned by public critics and the need for any generation capacity expansion became less acute due to a slower growth in power demand than projected. New scenarios for capacity expansion were explored that removed the nuclear component. It was decided that no new nuclear reactors would be needed before 2025 at current demand growth levels. If demand dropped further, no nuclear power would be needed before 2035.
In 2014, the government changed its attitude and policy with respect to nuclear power. A quick deal shrouded in secrecy was struck with Russia's Rosatom as a preferred partner for building new power reactors. Critics of the deal announced their suspicions that corruption was involved in the creation of the deal. The S.A. government denied that a contract had been signed with Rosatom and carried out a series of workshops with other reactor vendors. Critics of the planning process also pointed out that there was a lack of details with respect to location of the proposed nuclear power plants as well as their construction specifications. There was an initial environmental assessment of five possible coastal sites.
In July of 2015, the Department of Energy and Nuclear energy Cooperation of South Africa announced that there might eventually be as many as eight nuclear reactors constructed. Two massive coal plants are currently under construction in S.A. and their slipping schedules and rising costs may foreshadow similar problems if S.A. begins construction of nuclear power reactors. The projected ten year build time and seventy billion dollar price tag for the eight reactors could easily become twenty years and a hundred and forty billion dollars. There are some plans that would delay payment until after completion but this could result in huge debts being passed along to future generations. S.A. would be better served by investing in renewable sources such as wind and solar power which are dropping in price.
