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The Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa said the target set by the government was attainable, with Rob Adam, its president and managing executive for nuclear at Aveng group, saying the sector was expected to contribute significantly to South Africa’s electricity needs.
The enthusiasm for nuclear power appears to be at odds with the National Development Plan, adopted by the government to bolster growth and create jobs. The NDP expresses concern over the high cost of nuclear power and moots further analysis and costing of South Africa’s energy needs before going ahead with planned nuclear power stations.
Writing in Business Day, Anton Eberhard, a professor at the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business and a member of the National Planning Commission, says South Africa can achieve supply security “without investing in further nuclear power”.
He bases his argument on recent modelling done by the university’s Energy Research Centre.
“A new, updated power plan would look very different from the existing plan. Forecast electricity demand growth would be lower. No nuclear investments are envisaged. The new power choices gazetted by the minister of energy at the end of last year would not all be needed, at least not yet,” Prof Eberhard says.
However, at the Nuclear Africa 2013 conference in Midrand yesterday, Mr Motlanthe said nuclear was “ideal in this sense, because we can build large nuclear power plants at points around our southern coastline, and potentially elsewhere in the future”.
“This is a strategically sensible approach that requires us to use other energy sources in addition to coal,” Motlanthe said.
He warned that the risk of rolling blackouts was significant.
“However, it has become crystal clear that coal is not the long-term solution for our development needs. The expansion of energy capacity is the precondition for sustainable economic development.
We have seen how erratic electricity supply in the form of load-shedding can inhibit economic development in various ways,” said Motlanthe.
Data show that electricity consumption in South Africa has been growing rapidly in recent years, and the country is also part of the Southern African Power Pool, with extensive interconnections. — Reuters.
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