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SA to go nuclear
04/03/2008 12:30 - (SA)
Verashni Pillay
Johannesburg - In its push to more than double its generation capacity by 2025, Eskom is fast-tracking the
development of several power stations, with an emphasis on nuclear energy.
However activists have decried the move to nuclear energy, citing the dangers of nuclear waste and the risk of catastrophic accident, among other concerns.
The utility currently only had a reserve margin of eight percent - a good eight percent shy of the National Energy Regulator requirement of 16%. The tight reserve margin means black outs and load shedding are part and parcel of the current electricity supply.
Power stations and co-generation projects were being sped up to ensure that by 2010 the reserve margin was closer to 15%.
Heavy investment
Eskom has invested heavily in nuclear energy, with plans afoot to build the first of a number of nuclear reactors that will supply half of the 40 000MW the country is expected to be able to generate in the next 20 years.
The umbrella activist organisation, The Coalition Against Nuclear Energy in South Africa (CANE) has brought together community organisations, NGOs, academics and environmentalists to oppose South Africa's increasing reliance on nuclear energy.
The group said it is concerned about the "unnecessary and heavily subsidised costs, nuclear safety and the unresolved problem of long-term spent fuel storage".
Under Eskom's existing planning schedule, construction on the 'Nuclear-1' project should begin during January 2011, with the first unit of what would be a two-unit pressure water reactor (PWR) to be commissioned in 2016.
Dependence on nuclear energy is set to rise from five percent of the current energy mix to 15% over the next two decades, Eskom nuclear programmes general manager, Clive le Roux, said at a forum in January.
Eskom is in negotiations with two potential vendors, Westington in the USA and Areva in France, for the first of the proposed nuclear power stations while environmental impact assessments (EIA) were being carried out on five potential sites.
The nuclear licensing process will begin in 2008, as Eskom anticipates approval from the Department of Environment and Tourism Affairs by February 2009 for the plant.
Clean energy?
The five sites are Oyster Bay, Peraly Beach, Bantamsklip, the current Koeberg site, and Kleinzee - all along the coastline.
Eskom has said that nuclear energy offers the prospect of cleaner fuel, in a country that rates as one of the worse offenders of greenhouse gas emissions, due to our heavy reliance on coal.
On its own Eskom would rank as the 25th worst country emitter of the greenhouse-gas, and is coming under increasing pressure to reduce the prominence of coal as its primary energy source.
"Nuclear power offers a clean and efficient source of electrical energy," said Eskom. "Coal-fuelled power stations are restricted to the vicinity of coal mines due to the high cost of transporting vast quantities of coal."
However environmental activist group, Earthlife Africa (ELA) slammed the "idea that nuclear power is a clean, safe and is even a renewable energy source.
"Nothing could be further from the truth if one considers," said the organisation, listing the "extremely energy intensive" complete nuclear fuel chain, the dangers posed by even low doses of radiation to human and environmental health and "the fact that nuclear waste remains active and a threat to animal and human health for millions of years to come".
Cane claimed there were renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies available that were "faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power".
- News24
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