South Africa lacks the skills necessary to implement government’s plan to build 9.6 GWe of new nuclear energy capacity, warns nuclear-qualified Quality Strategies International CEO David Crawford. “Apart from the concern about the affordability of the programme, South Africa is short of the full range of skills required for the nuclear new build, all the way down from project management to artisans,” he highlights. “I would say that there is a link between project management and project overrun costs and what can be called nonquality costs.”

Crawford’s many and varied clients have included Eskom, Eskom’s Koeberg nuclear power plant (NPP), the now effectively terminated pebble-bed modular reactor project and the National Nuclear Regulator. “The various parties involved have got to get around the table and identify the numerous skills required,” he urges. “You can’t manage it until you measure it, so we must first establish what already exists. What institutes, courses, already exist? What must be set up? For example, the North-West University Potchefstroom teaches nuclear engineering, but how great is its capacity?”

He points out that previous major training programmes to develop highly skilled artisans in South Africa – associated with the Mossgas and Coega projects – were successful in terms of the training, but lack of highly skilled jobs for the trainees after they had graduated meant that the skills they had were lost, either through skills fade (from having to take less skilled jobs) or emigration. Coega trained some 8 000 artisans, but the larger Coega Industrial Development Zone, which should have created the jobs for them, was crippled by the country’s electricity crisis and very few of the artisans got highly skilled jobs. However, help has been offered. “The UK has offered South Africa resources, in term of nuclear training,” he reports.

Then there is the question of project management. “Management systems for the project are essential. It would be advisable if the regulators and the base client could come together to create a homogenous, common standard.”

Crawford suggests that the baseline of such a common standard should be the new iterations of key ISO standards. These would be ISO 9001 (for quality management), ISO 14001 (environmental management), ISO 30001 (risk management) and ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety). “The new ISO 9000 covers the aspect of risk very effectively,” he cites. Putting all these together and combining them with the nuclear regulations would make things easier and clearer for project managers working on the programme.

“From the point of view of a contractor or supplier, there needs to be a commonality on how these regulations and standards will be implemented,” he notes. “In effect, this would resolve the issue of multiple systems.

“The other thing I would suggest is that the numerous regulators and clients must come together and agree to do joint audits to eliminate the burden on supplier companies of multiple audits, thereby saving both costs and time,” he proposes. “This has been done in the motor industry and ISO 19011 – the auditing standard – makes provision for this, for what it calls ‘joint and integrated audits’. Such integrated audits would look at safety, environmental and quality aspects together.”

The proposed South African nuclear power expansion programme could involve the construction of up to six new NPPs. However, the programme has been subject to repeated delays. The country already has one nuclear power plant, with two reactors, at Koeberg, near Cape Town, which has been operating for some 30 years. Like Koeberg, the new NPPs would be owned and operated by Eskom. However, the procurement agency will be the Department of Energy.

Crawford addressed the recent Nuclear Industries Association of South Africa workshop ‘The Road to Nuclear Compliance’.