The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) will extend the life of its current nuclear research reactor, Safari-1, for at least ten years. Thereafter, it will be replaced by a new reac- tor. The corporation hopes that the new reactor will be built and commissioned by 2020. Safari-1 is used for research and development and the provision of various commercial services – mainly the production of radioisotopes for Necsa subsidiary NTP Radioisotopes. Research reactors do not generate electricity.
The reactor was originally commissioned in 1965. (Safari originally stood for South African Fundamental Atomic Research Installation, but this full name has not been used for decades.) Under the new Necsa structure, to be adopted on September 1, Safari-1 will fall under the Operations division of the corporation (see Engineering News August 16, 2013).
“Its replacement will be a multipurpose reactor (MPR), but it won’t be an ‘everything for everybody’ reactor,” explains Necsa CEO Phumzile Tshelane. “It will be a customised-for-Necsa-requirements MPR. We haven’t yet issued any requests for information or requests for proposals. We’re developing a procurement strategy and that will determine how we proceed from here on.”
Safari-1 has a capacity of 20 MW, and the capacity of the new MPR would also be around 20 MW, although it could be 15 MW. It is unlikely to be greater than 20 MW. The corporation is currently looking at funding options, which it will share with government.
It is also working on the structuring of the project, with the aim of localising it as much as possible, regarding project management and construction.
Necsa has identified two main options for the new reactor, currently being referred to, for convenience, as Safari-2 (as the project advances, it will probably get a more South African name). The first is to release a tender (there are a number of international companies that can design and build MPRs) and award the winner with an engineering, procurement and construction contract to build and deliver the reactor. The second is for the corporation to select a technology partner for the reactor (who would supply the design and the reactor itself) and then put the reactor facility construction contracts out to tender.
“Necsa and South Africa would want an option that would allow for optimum local participation,” he affirms. “We’ll have to use someone else’s technology, but we want to involve South Africans as much as possible. But, the more South Africans are involved, the less external [foreign export credit agency] funding will be available.”
The corporation would prefer its new MPR programme to be completely separate from the country’s planned new nuclear power plant (NPP) construction programme. This is, in part, because the two types of reactors are totally different in design, size, capacity and function, and in part because the timescales of the two programmes are totally different. The proposed new NPP programme has a much longer timescale than Necsa’s new MPR programme.
There is also another important reason. “If we envisage, as we do, the participation of Necsa in the [new NPP] build programme, on the engineering side, it would help to have ‘Safari-2’ built ahead of that [NPP] build programme, to build confidence,” points out Tshelane.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are currently some 240 research reactors operating in 56 countries. Other African countries with operational research reactors are Algeria (which has two), Egypt (one, plus a second in temporary shutdown), Ghana (one), Morocco (one) and Nigeria (one). In addition, Libya has one that is currently in a temporary shutdown. Perhaps surprisingly, the Democratic Republic of Congo once had two research reactors: both have been permanently shut down.