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Impossible to fund South Africa’s nuclear power plan

Greenpeace boss says plan for nuclear power stations is impossible to fund http://www.bdlive.co.za/ business/energy/2015/10/08/ greenpeace-boss-says-plan-for- nuclear-power-stations-is- impossible-to-fund BY WYNDHAM HARTLEY, 08 OCTOBER 2015, SOUTH Africa’s planned nuclear build programme would never get off the ground because it would be impossible to fund, Greenpeace executive director Kumi Naidoo said on Thursday.
Mr Naidoo, on visit to the land of his birth, was a guest of the Cape Town Press Club at which he spoke on global warming and environmental matters.

Responding to questions, Mr Naidoo said the plan for nuclear power stations “is crazy because it is too expensive and too dangerous”.

“It won’t come off because no-one will be able to fund it,” he said, adding that when government first started talking about a nuclear build the price tag was R1-trillion but that was when the exchange rate was R8 to the US dollar and not the current R14.

He said that the main concern about the obsession with nuclear was that it softened the concentration on renewable energy sources like sun and wind which created more jobs than nuclear.

Chairman of the African National Congress’s (ANC) policy sub-committee Jeff Radebe is on record as saying the energy challenge is a top priority in a discussion document for its national general council.
The ANC has said that nuclear energy plan will be discussed at the council, but has also said it would go ahead unless there were affordability assessments.

Mr Naidoo expressed concern that there was no safe way of disposing of nuclear waste which could last anything between 200 and 1,000 years.

On his main topic of whether the earth could survive global warming, he said: “There is a small window of opportunity to change things, but it is closing fast.”

The CIA and the Pentagon in the US were right, he said, when they said that the threat to global peace and security was the effects of climate change which placed people in competition for water and other natural resources which they were prepared to fight for.

“There are no jobs on a dead planet”.

Mr Naidoo said however he was optimistic about the future “because we don’t have any choice”. Responding to a question about climate change sceptics, he described the view they held as denialism — “like the view in South Africa that HIV did not cause AIDS”.

October 9, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | general