In her Budget Vote speech, Energy Minister Tina Joematt-Pettersson confirmed that nuclear power is a central feature in our future energy mix.

She also pointed out that South Africa had a track record in running a nuclear programme.

In fact, South Africa is one of the oldest nuclear countries in the world. We have been in nuclear for over 60 years. This year, the Koeberg nuclear power station celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, and next year the Safari 1 reactor at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation, near Pretoria, will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.

An expansion of our existing nuclear capabilities and capacity is a totally sensible and logical step. This is a continuing journey.

This brings me to the story of cost. There is a figure that the media love to quote, and that is that the new nuclear expansion could cost R1-trillion – it is just such a lovely number to use to scare people.

A couple of years ago, the Energy Minister at the time, Dipuo Peters, said that she was setting aside R300-billion for the nuclear programme. She said this figure was for starters and we would then see what develops. It was later said that the entire programme could develop to R1-trillion.

Soon after that, the antinuclear lobby jumped on the ‘R1-trillion’ number as the cost of one power station. The Department of Energy (DoE) then issued a denial that the R1-trillion was a budgeted figure.

Predictably, the denial was ignored and various people gleefully keep repeating the ‘R1-trillion’ number as a scare.

Let us use some brainpower and look at this issue. It is incorrect to look at any nuclear cost as some single number; that is not in the nature of the game.

In 2013, then DoE director-general Nelisiwe Magubane said that we should aim for 50% localisation on the first power plant. I agree – that is a sensible target and is quite achievable.

Further, for a couple of years now, the concept of SA Nuclear Inc has been on the table. What this means is that the country needs to create a nuclear construction and fabrication platform from which to export to the world.

If we are going to encourage localisation, then we must go big and offer industry a world market to make the whole exercise attractive.

We already do this with our motor car fabrication industry. South Africa exports locally assembled cars all over the world. Some portion of each car is imported, some is made locally and the whole lot is assembled locally. This is good business sense. We need to develop the same sort of approach for nuclear power.

Therefore, talking of a ‘cost’ of R1-trillion is incorrect. We have to look on this as the start of a journey, not only to build nuclear power stations but also to create the SA Nuclear Inc platform.

In due course, the more money that passes through the platform, the better. A journalist asked me what I thought of the ‘R1-trillion’ cost of nuclear. I said that the figure was being pushed as an antinuke mantra but that I would be happy for the figure to rise to R2-trillion or R3-rillion over the coming decades, with a 50% localisation as the basis. I am talking of total economic activity, not ‘cost’.

A comparison would be like building a harbour. You cannot ask: “What is the cost of the harbour?” as if it were a one-off payment to some foreign country. If you were to spend as much as R1-trillion setting up the harbour, with considerable local content, but then, over the next few decades, it produced R2-trillion or R3-trillion in economic activity in and out of the country, then that would be something to cheer about.

A large amount of money, if spent wisely and efficiently, implies job creation and general economic benefit for all people, including the country as a whole.

Research carried out at North-West University has shown that nuclear power, over a lifetime, is cheaper than coal power.

We have to build the nuclear, and we need to do it now. This is not a short-term gap-filler – it is the foresight of starting on a long and highly productive journey for the country.

We have the opportunity to become a nuclear supplier to the world. We have the talent, we have the knowledge, we have the experience, we have the industrial base, to do this.

We now need to harness the self-confidence and the spirit of achievement which we have shown in the past, and get going.
We must stop letting this ‘R1-trillion’ little flag, waived furiously by some, to be some form of distraction. We must grab the spirit of this vast Africa, go for nuclear in a big way, produce twice as much electricity as now and build this beautiful land. You cannot do that without a lot of energy, human and electrical.