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South Africa’s nuclear ambitions will be difficult to realise

South Africa’s nuclear power ambitions has been a topic of hot debate over the last year or so.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) plans to build a number of nuclear reactors over the next ten years have met with mixed reactions, with many opining that nuclear power may not be the way to go.

In November last year Eskom CEO Brian Molefe said that South Africa needs to add nuclear power to its electricity generating capacity “urgently”.  However, nuclear plants are time-consuming and expensive to build, as evidenced in a World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016, released today.

“An overwhelming majority of participants from government, banking sector, academia and independent expert community concluded during an NGO-convened March 2016 ‘Technical Workshop on the Economics of Nuclear Energy’ in Johannesburg that there was no viable financing scheme for newbuild in sight,” the report said.

“It is therefore difficult to conceive that the nuclear new-build program would fit into South Africa’s strained budget for  many years to come.”

On top of how expensive it would be to build two new nuclear power plants in South Africa, is the issue of how long the pair would take to construct.

“We do not think that it is possible to continue with an energy mix that excludes nuclear,” Molefe told Parliament’s Public Enterprises Committee in November. “It is feasible to fund and operate further nuclear plants in South Africa and, in fact, it is urgent we do so.”

The government has set out a five-year target to get the nuclear stations up and running – meaning that it wants all the players in place and the first construction to start in four-year’s time – but that is very unlikely to happen.

“The five-year target as outlined in the Strategic Plan, is to have completed technology and vendor selection, the procurement process and to have begun construction of the first unit by 2020; with connection of the first unit to the grid by 2023 and the second one in 2024. This appears to be an overly ambitious timeline, by any standards,” the report stated.

In November last year we wrote a feature on the average time it takes to build a nuclear power station (8.2 years), and making it clear that South Africa would find it very difficult to hit the five-year target.

The study has corroborated our findings, highlighting that the mean time to build a reactor is 10.4 years.

The report noted that: “Average construction time of the 10 units that started up in 2015 – eight Chinese, one Korean and one Russian that took almost 31 years to complete – was 8.2 years, while it took an average of 6.2 years to connect four units – three Chinese and one South Korean – to the grid in the first half of 2016, 13.7 years when including the veteran Watts-Bar-2.”

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South Africa’s own Koeberg power station was close to pushing the ten-year mark for construction, as Unit 1 took 8.1 years to complete, and Unit 2 was just under nine-and-a-half years.

But even taking into account the financial aspect and the construction times, there is still the issue of nuclear versus renewable energy.

South Africa is ranked 8th in terms of renewable energy investment, with $4.5 billion going towards it last year.

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The report notes that with the cost of constructing nuclear energy rising every year, and renewable energy becoming cheaper almost monthly, the gap between the two power sources are steadily widening in terms of feasibility.

“With rising nuclear construction costs contrasting rapidly decreasing prices for renewable technology this trend is likely to accelerate, in particular if decarbonisation objectives agreed in Paris in December 2015 are adhered too,” the report said. “Nuclear power, even in countries that have or are considering to deploy it, will increasingly play a junior role to renewable energy which is already the case in many of the world’s largest economies.”

It is also interesting when one has a look at the global output between renewables and nuclear: wind power output grew by 17%, solar by 33%, but nuclear power output only increased by 1.3% – which was partly because China increased its output by 31%.  Brazil, China, India, Japan and the Netherlands now all generate more electricity from wind turbines alone than from nuclear power plants. The reported also highlighted that China spent over $100 billion on renewable energy in 2015, while  investment in six nuclear reactors only totaled up to $18 billion.

South Africa faces an uphill battle if it decides to pursue its nuclear ambitions, as the cost, time and the popularity of renewables will all play a role. As mentioned, the procurement and future plans for South Africa’s nuclear power stations have been met with some resistance, and if the report is anything to go by, it is going to be a very difficult sell to all who needs to be involved.

[Image – CC by 3.0/Pipodesign Philipp P Egli]

 

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