From left: Unit 1 at Koeberg nuclear power station (Photo: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa. (Photo: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images) | A view of part of the 3,850ha property for the proposed nuclear facility at Thyspunt. (Photo: Robin Moulang) 
In a media briefing on Tuesday, Minister of Electricity, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa confirmed all the “suspensive conditions” to start procuring 2,500MW of new nuclear power immediately. Zizamele Mbambo, Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy in the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) said the first unit will be commissioned somewhere between 2032 and 2033.
The announcement comes amid escalating concerns about the country's energy security, the worst year of power outages since the electricity crisis first began over a decade ago and the need to transition to less carbon-intensive methods of electricity generation.
The announcement comes at a pivotal time for South Africa’s energy sector as the country grapples with a nearly two-decade-long energy crisis in its worst year on record, characterised by rolling blackouts and an overreliance on aging coal-fired power stations. The announcement is in line with government's now outdated Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2019, which envisaged 2,500MW of nuclear power by 2030.
That IRP says in “decision 8” that the government should “commence preparations for a nuclear build programme to the extent of 2,500MW at a pace and scale that the country can afford because it is a no-regret option in the long term.”
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Ramokgopa explained that despite the DMRE’s intentions to soon publish the updated IRP for public comment, “this exercise we’re doing now is pursuant to what sits in the IRP 2019 and that still remains — as I stand before you — as valid. And also when you go to 2023, if you look at the generation sources, nuclear is still a significant part of this and this is going to fall within that.”
Importantly, he explained, all of the preconditions to procure nuclear energy have been satisfied. One of these conditions is that “new nuclear power be procured through an engineering, procurement and construction contract — what we call an EPC contract.”
The minister continued that “DMRE submitted the report to the regulator addressing these suspensive conditions in July of 2023. Of course, Nersa (National Energy Regulator of South Africa) still had an obligation to satisfy itself if the response from the DMRE to the suspensive conditions are sufficient for Nersa to consider giving this process the green light. And I am happy to indicate that on the 30th of August 2023, Nersa considered the DMRE’s submission and concluded that the suspensive conditions had been satisfactorily addressed.”
“Essentially what Nersa then said was that ‘we are giving you the go-ahead to proceed’. So, to give a legal effect to the ministerial determination for the procurement of new nuclear capacity of August 2020, the determination and Nersa’s concurrence will be gazetted. So now we’re starting the process of gazetting. So what we are triggering now, is essentially a procurement process. So we’re going out to ensure that we’re able to get that additional 2,500 megawatts of nuclear capacity to ensure that we’re able to meet the issues of national security and energy sovereignty.”
Ramokgopa added that, in his estimation, “this is a significant milestone because we know that historically, in the recent past, the process was mired in controversy. Now we’re happy that we’ve been able to iron out the issues related to how the procurement process needs to unfold, we’ve met the regulatory requirements as per Nersa’s legal requirement and also now we have concurrence of Nersa.”
Read more in Daily Maverick: How the Russian nuclear deal would have taken South Africa to the brink
Daily Maverick previously reported that a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled “Nuclear Enrichment: Russia’s Ill-Fated Influence Campaign in South Africa” explained how Ecodefense!, a Russian environmental non-government organisation, had leaked a copy of the confidential September 2014 agreement between South Africa and Russia to two South African activists.
“The contents of the document made it difficult for the government to convince anyone that it was conducting proper tender-based bids from French, South Korean, and US firms, let alone subjecting the deal to parliamentary review.
“The activists, Makoma Lekalakala and Liz McDaid, won considerable acclaim for stirring grassroots opposition and organising legal challenges,” the authors wrote.
Read more in Daily Maverick: How South Africans thwarted secret Putin/Zuma nuclear deal
Activists’ suspicions raised
In a telephone interview with Daily Maverick after the briefing by the minister, Lekalakala shared her concerns.
“I think the process is still flawed. Nersa has not really announced or not informed the public on whether the DMRE has satisfied the substantive conditions when they applied for that determination.”
She added that Earthlife, the non-profit organisation she is a part of, asked for the information but that Nersa had not shared it with them.
“It’s also surprising that it’s the Minister of Elecricity making this announcement. We expected this from DMRE. Something suspicious is happening, especially since the IRP 2023 is not yet in the public domain, there is still a public process that needs to happen. It is questionable why this happens while the process is still in progress. Why the rush?”
Lekalakala continued that, “There are already issues with Koeberg Power Station. Some of the concerns from Koeberg don’t really give confidence. There are issues around safety we need clarity on”.
“I heard them speak about small modular reactors (SMRs), SA spent R10-billion on pebble bed reactor technology that we still don’t use. The SMRs are good on paper but have not been proven anywhere and this is a very risky position. They shouldn’t fool the public. This will not assist in reducing load shedding, the process is still flawed and it’s nothing different where the public was not informed [with the previously mooted nuclear deal].”
Scant details from officials
Fielding questions from journalists at the briefing, DDG Mbambo explained that he could not share many details about whether the forthcoming Request For Proposals (RFP) will include small modular reactors or more conventional nuclear builds.
“We’re not in the position to start talking about what the RFP will contain at this stage because we have not yet started the work of designing the request for proposal. But just to give you a sense that in 2020, the Department [of energy] went out on a Request For Information, which was a non-binding request for information from the different nuclear vendors to demonstrate to South Africa as to how they would implement a project of this magnitude.”
He continued that the request “came up with a lot of information that’s quite useful in terms of the conventional nuclear power plants as well as the small modular reactors and we took that as part of our considerations going forward, but at this stage we cannot pronounce as to the shape and form and the format that the RFP — which is a commercially binding document — would look like and what it will call for.”
When asked about timelines, Mbambo continued that “based on our assessment as the team, having done the request for information, as I’ve alluded to, we found that the the ideal time by which to start commissioning the first unit of the this 2500[megawatts] is around 2032, 2033.”
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When asked about these timelines and how this new build is unlikely to resolve rolling blackouts, the minister said that not being able to prepare for the future while fixing the present is “the height of folly”.
“Part of the reason why we are where we are today is because when we were advised in 1997 about the need for us to be able to build new generation capacity and that if you don’t build that new generation capacity, the country’s going to run into a generation problem 10 years from that, we were complacent because we had the excess generation cheap and we thought that ‘no, that’s not something that requires our attention’ and it caught up with us, and we’re still catching up.
“We have two tasks. The one task — which is a primary task — is the ending of load shedding ensuring that there’s sufficient generation that meets demand immediately and then you have to ensure that going into the future, you don’t run into the same problem.” DM