Although specialised skills are available in South Africa to assist in the development of South Africa’s proposed nuclear power programme, more skilled people will be needed to successfully execute the programme, says North-West University (NWU) School of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering director Professor Harry Wichers.
“We have specialised skills in South Africa, which I am sure will take us very far, however . . . the country will need hundreds of skilled artisans, technicians, engineers and project managers for the proposed 9 600 MW nuclear build project,” he told Engineering News during a tour of nuclear giant Rosatom’s nuclear power plant, in Novovoronezh, Russia.
He added that the country did not have the budget or training capacity to cater for that.
The new optimised Novovoronezh units are the first high-performance Russian nuclear power plants to use post-Fukushima technology, making them safe and durable.
At the Russian plant, qualified nuclear engineers and technicians go through rigorous exams and evaluations to become operators monitoring screens for up to 12 hours a day.
Wichers pointed out that this could be a problem in South Africa, as graduates and qualified engineers do not necessarily want to be called or considered “plant operators”.
“A mindset change is needed in South Africa. There is a negative stigma around being called a plant operator, despite the fact that they fulfill valuable functions in all sectors in industry,” he said.
He added that the Russian methodology of training, though a costly and a lengthy process, was the right one to follow.