To protest against government’s proposed nuclear power plans, Greenpeace activists on Tuesday locked themselves in a 4 m wooden Trojan Horse outside the Department of Energy (DoE) headquarters in Pretoria.

“New investments in nuclear are a trap that will not solve South Africa’s current electricity crisis, since new nuclear reactors will take at least a decade to build. In reality, the cost of nuclear investments – estimated to be up to R1-trillion – could well bankrupt the country and will deliver too little, too late and at far too high a price,” Greenpeace Africa energy campaign manager Melita Steele said.

The protest followed Greenpeace Africa’s call last week for Energy Minister Tina-Joemat-Pettersson to make all the key documents and plans surrounding South Africa’s controversial R1-trillion nuclear deal publicly available. The organisation requested a response within a week.

Greenpeace Africa said its executive director Michael O’Brien-Onyeka had not received a response from the Minister.

The organisation demanded that the DoE release timelines for the completion of an updated Integrated Resources Plan (IRP) and that the nuclear procurement process be halted until the new IRP was approved by Cabinet.

It also called for public hearings before procurement could start, that all information related to potential costs for the nuclear programme be released, that all expected impacts on the price of electricity be released into the public domain, that the full nuclear readiness report be released into the public domain and that the full procurement process and all details of the competitive bidding process be outlined by the DoE before procurement started.

Greenpeace further requested that all studies on the potential for job creation related to the nuclear build programme be released into the public domain, and that the budget and financing/funding model be made public, along with a financing plan approved by the National Treasury.

It also requested that any technical studies completed by the DoE related to new nuclear investments, studies into the economic impacts of the nuclear investments, and studies into the economic effect of the localisation of the nuclear programme, be made public, as well as that the environmental-impact assessment for the first proposed nuclear reactor (nuclear-1) be completed before procurement started.

“Any amendments to nuclear legislation must go through a rigorous public participation process before finalisation,” it said.