The Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa (Niasa) is not concerned about the latest postponement in the country’s new nuclear power plant (NPP) construction programme, “[a]lthough, as an industry, we’d have liked this process to have started a long time ago”, observes Niasa MD Knox Msebenzi. “Our view, as an industry, is, if we had started this process a long time ago, we’d now have nuclear power plants coming on stream and the public would never have heard of the term ‘load-shedding’. The sooner we get the NPPs online, the sooner we can stabilise electricity supply.”

“The delay, as we understand it, is to ensure that everything is done by the book,” he notes. “We welcome that. It’s better late than never and better than having further delays caused by litigation and other challenges. “It’s better to follow due process. Nuclear is a highly regulated industry so we’re very rule-bound in our culture, so that’s why we welcome doing everything by the book.”

Niasa welcomes Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson’s recent announcement in Parliament that Eskom will be responsible for the acquisition of the new NPPs. “I think this is in line with what the [International Atomic Energy Agency] recommendations are,” points out Msebenzi. “And we are comfortable about the fact that Eskom has got experience with nuclear, as it has been running [the] Koeberg [NPP] for the past 30 years.” Eskom also has experience in running major projects, and has learned many lessons from the serious delays and cost overruns on the current Medupi and Kusile coal-fired power station programmes.

With these decisions by government, a time line for the new NPP programme has become clearer and the industry can start to plan, in anticipation of the start of construction. The Government has adopted a ‘fleet’ approach to the new nuclear programme – that is, a single design for the reactor and plant will be chosen and all the NPPs will be built to this design, which will serve as a standard for the country. “The fleet approach is very good for localisation and that is something we are looking at very aggressively,” he highlights.

But the programme will require public acceptance, if not active public support. To this end, Niasa is going to intensify public awareness campaigns to make people aware of the benefits of nuclear technology. A key issue that will be addressed is the idea that building new NPPs could result in the country having electricity generation overcapacity. (Currently, the official plan is still to build 9.6 GW of new NPP capacity.) “I’d like to say, given we don’t have 100% electricity penetration – 20% of our people don’t have electricity – how can we talk about overcapacity?” he queries. “Moreover, South African electricity consumption is down because it has been managed down, due to a lack of capacity. Economic growth is dependent on electricity growth. There is a correlation between the two.”

Further, given that a number of South Africa’s neighbouring countries still have limited electricity penetration, any South African surplus could be supplied to them to help them expand their own electrification programmes. “We can only say we have overcapacity when 100% of South Africans and 100% of the populations of all our neighbours have electricity.”

And nuclear energy can be used for other applications as well. Most relevant for a South Africa that will likely have to establish crisis management for its national water supply is desalination of seawater. “Nuclear can make desalination economical,” he affirms. “We can actually never have an excessive supply of electricity, for there are many uses of electricity that we have not even begun to tap into.”

A second key issue is cost, “[e]specially this figure of R1-trillion that is bandied about in the media”, asserted Msebenzi. “Somebody must have done a back-of-an- envelope calculation, making very rough assumptions, including a very short build period for all 9.6 GW. But it won’t be like that. Construction will be spread over 20 years. “We don’t agree with the R1-trillion figure.” Niasa has not done any cost estimates of its own, because, to be accurate, they would require access to proprietary information which belongs to the prospective NPP vendors. Also, just how much building 9.6 GW of new NPPs will cost will depend on how the programme is executed. “If the NPPs are bought ‘off-the-shelf’, so to speak, without any localisation, it would be significantly cheaper than if a high level of localisation is required,” he explains. “But localisation creates local jobs, local industry and future exports, for example. ‘Off-the-shelf’ would create only operator and maintenance jobs, and not many people are needed to operate or maintain an NPP.”