Govt’s nuclear plans hold out hope for massive involvement by locals

13th March 2015

By: Kelvin Kemm

  

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I was invited to give a presentation about nuclear power at St Francis Bay.

St Francis Bay falls within the Kouga local municipality, an area encompassing Jeffreys Bay, Oyster Bay, St Francis Bay, Humansdorp and a bit more. This is a large distributed area just south of Port Elizabeth.

The importance of Kouga is that one of the proposed sites for the first new nuclear power station is Thyspunt, a coastal site near Oyster Bay. Late in 2014, I was in Jeffreys Bay when the acting mayor of Kouga, Vernon Stuurman, called me. We had a meeting that evening and he told me how little the people of the area knew about nuclear power. He asked me to arrange a one-day seminar to inform people.
I then invited South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) group executive Xolisa Mabhongo and Eskom manager: nuclear land management Gert Greeff to also travel to St Francis Bay to be speakers.

We had a good turnout of some 50 people of substance. We also invited some of the antinuclear lobby, who did turn up. One should note that, when the antinuclear lobby people hold one of their meetings, they never invite any pronuclear people.

When we announced our meeting, the antinuclear lobby immediately reacted with fury and started sending around insulting messages, and also threatened to arrange a crowd to disrupt our meeting. That is their interpretation of free speech. If such an approach were not sad, it would be amusing.

TV and newspaper reporters turned up and all were polite and receptive. Interestingly, one of the antinuclear people sat in the meeting until the end, asking questions and making demands with a look of fire in his face. He then went out and was interviewed by the TV news crew. He appeared on TV later. In his TV bit, he stated that he was concerned because absolutely no provision had been made for an emergency evacuation plan.

That is not true. It is interesting that, with us nuclear experts on hand in the formal proceedings, he did not mention the topic of evacuation at all. The topic did not come up at all, but then he saw fit to use the smear tactic on TV. Unfortunately, that is so typical of the approach of the antinuclear lobby. There is absolutely no way that the National Nuclear Regulator will allow a nuclear plant to be built and operated without a comprehensive evacuation plan in place.

The antinuke clan use these distortions and smear tactics worldwide, so the St Francis Bay group were merely fitting the mould, I suppose.
Nuclear Africa, in conjunction with Necsa, will be holding a major nuclear conference at Necsa, near Pretoria, from March 18 to 20. President Jacob Zuma and Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson will attend. We are also fortunate that other very high-ranking international guests will also attend. These include International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Yukiya Amano, World Nuclear Association chairperson Jean-Jacques Gautrot and New York-based ASME VP and governor elect Bryan Erler. We have visitors coming from places as diverse as Korea, Russia, France, the UK, the US, China and Japan.

What we have also tried to do for the past few years is to get the whole spectrum of nuclear people to attend. What this means is that we will have the nuclear scientists and nuclear engineers, but we will also have the companies that will pour the concrete for the nuclear power plants. We will have the people who weld the pipes and supply the pumps, as well as the people who install the electronic circuitry, and so on.

We need the whole team to gather. There is vast scope for business, large and small. This is a great opportunity for many people to get in at the ground floor.

Government’s major nuclear plans hold out great hope for huge local involvement of engineering-sector folks across the whole spectrum.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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