Nuclear power – a very bad plan for South Africa

Why SA mustn’t go nuclear August 19 2015 IOL Business Report
By Vladimir Slivyak Russia – According to Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson, the South African government has entered into a nuclear energy procurement process likely to be completed as early as 2016. So far, South Africa has signed Intergovernmental Framework Agreements on nuclear co-operation with Russia, France, China, South Korea and the US.

The agreement with Russia is very advanced compared to the others. This leads to the assumption that the procurement process will result in risky Russian reactors with a total capacity of 9.6 GW.

The risk of nuclear power to South Africa comes from the high costs of nuclear construction. It also comes with decommissioning nuclear plants, and safety concerns regarding the Russian nuclear industry.

Nuclear energy is expensive

Today, a 1 000 MWt reactor costs at least $6 billion. But the real question is, does nuclear technology produce cheap electricity? Two recent South African studies have found that nuclear generated electricity will be more expensive than the electricity generated by new coal plants, solar photovoltaic panels and wind.

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research projects the levelised cost of electricity from nuclear power to be R1/kWh, R0.80/kWh from new coal, R0.80/kWh from solar photo voltaic, and R0.60/kWh from wind in today’s prices.

Analysis by another South African institute also projects that the levelised cost of nuclear energy to be higher than most other technologies. Both studies are inclusive of capital‚ finance‚ maintenance and fuel costs.

As the projected costs of electricity reveal, committing to a nuclear future now is senseless. A report by a Swiss-based banking firm claimed: “We believe solar will eventually replace nuclear and coal, and be established as the default technology of the future to generate and supply electricity.”

Africa joins the renewable revolution…….

The future doesn’t look good for nuclear

Despite the nuclear industry’s enormous state funding and political support, the contribution of nuclear to the world’s primary energy production has dropped from 8% in 2000 to around 4.4% in 2014………

Accidents are a very real threat

Russia and the previous Soviet Union has experienced many problems as a consequence of nuclear power development……..

It is not only Russian nuclear industry which had terrible nuclear accidents. Reactors were melting in Fukushima in Japan; Three Mile Island in the US; Sellafield in the UK. There are dozens of smaller but still very dangerous events. But Russian industry definitely occupies one of the top places in this list.

From this, it is no surprise that when the agreement was signed between South Africa and Russia, this clause was included:

In the case of a nuclear accident, South Africa will accept all of the liability.

Russian nuclear federation Rosatom has launched a large public relations campaign in South Africa with the intention of convincing the public that nuclear power is the solution to the electricity crisis. Rosatom’s campaign makes use of several well-known nuclear lobbyists and deliberately misrepresents key information, such as the real cost of nuclear power and the status of the global nuclear industry.

The Nkandla scandal is a drop in the ocean compared with the pending Russian nuclear deal. South African civil society must take a stand now towards the future it wants before it is too late.

Vladimir Slivyak is a senior lecturer of Environmental Policy at the Russian National Research University’s Higher School of Economics…..http://www.iol.co.za/business/opinion/why-sa-mustn-t-go-nuclear-1.1902495#.VdT7EbKqpHw.