Environmentalists rejoice

2005-01-26 13:18

Cape Town - Environmentalists claimed a major victory on Wednesday as the Cape High Court set aside a government decision to allow construction of a pebble bed modular reactor.

Eskom hopes to build the multi-billion-rand 110 megawatt mini-reactor as a demonstration model at Koeberg, north of Cape Town.

Ruling with costs in favour of an application by non-government organisation Earthlife Africa, a trio of judges headed by Ben Griesel said the 2003 decision by Department of Environment Affairs director-general Chippy Olver was "fatally flawed".

They ordered Olver to allow Earthlife and other interested parties a chance to make further written submissions, and to consider them before making a new decision on the reactor.

Earthlife had argued that the final environmental impact report (EIR), on which Olver made his decision, contained a substantial number of documents not previously made public, including extracts from a safety analysis report.

The judge said Olver - who is leaving the department next month - had "consistently" adopted the attitude that Earthlife had no right to comment on the final EIR.

Olver and other officials had "closed their minds" to further submissions after the draft stage.

'Alligned on Eskom's side'

He also said that though the consultants hired by Eskom to draw up the report were notionally independent, in fact they were employed by Eskom and "clearly aligned on Eskom's side".

"It meant the only 'hearing' afforded to the applicant, was an opportunity to make submissions to the consultants for 'the other side'," Griesel said.

Earthlife spokesperson Liz McDaid said Earthlife was very happy.

"It's a big victory," she said. "We've been fighting the pebble bed for five years and we think it's a victory for the environment and the public. It means now that all the info that was kept secret can be exposed and critiqued."

McDaid said the claim that the reactor was inherently safe would be exposed.

"We are saying nobody knows. They haven't finished the design so how can they claim it's safe?

"The other issue is the economics. We should be putting our money into other more environmentally friendly energy technologies.

"We believe there's no economic case to be made for the PBMR. It's all smoke and mirrors, and that will be exposed."

Department spokesperson JP Louw said the department was studying the judgment and would issue a statement "in due course".

Potential for nuclear disaster

Earthlife's attorney Angela Andrews, who works for the Legal Resources Centre, said the court decision was a great victory for environmental groups wanting to comment on EIRs directly to decision makers, rather than to consultants.

A full submission to Olver on behalf of Earthlife had already been drawn up, "and hopefully we'll get a more rational decision".

She said the decision also opened up the issue of safety and economics to public debate.

Though the reactor was "only a design concept", it had the potential for a nuclear disaster.

"That has to be properly evaluated and that evaluation has to be made before the final environmental impact assessment is done," she said.

She said the costs of building and decommissioning the reactor would total about R15bn, very expensive compared with other nuclear and other energy technologies.

Eskom wanted to build the pebble bed reactor as a commercial venture, in order to sell more pebble beds, not to supply electricity.

Investors pulled out

However, investors had pulled out of the project, and the public were going to have to bankroll a demonstration model in which there was no interest.

An energy policy expert from the University of Greenwich, Steve Thomas, said although the pebble-bed design, envisaged primary as an export technology, has been more than a decade in development, it still has no buyers.

He said that as a result pressure is increasing on Eskom itself to buy the first 24 commercial units (it has already conditionally committed to buying ten) long before it is known whether the reactor will be reliable or economic.

He said that if each commercial unit costs only a fifth of the R15bn demonstration unit, this will mean a total commitment of public funds of nearly R90bn.

- SAPA