Nuclear omission is telling

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan did not use the word “nuclear” even once while delivering his budget speech. By chance, while he was delivering his speech, the High Court in Cape Town was hearing a case against the government regarding the illegal process and secrecy surrounding the nuclear-expansion programme to date.

After all the hype in the media recently around the nuclear expansion programme, potentially costing R1-trillion, it is curious that nuclear power was entirely omitted from the budget speech. Or is it?

The consensus emerging among energy analysts and modellers across the country is that we simply do not need further nuclear expansion. Just last week, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research presented the portfolio committee on energy with its “least cost” energy plan to 2050, which has no new nuclear build.

Yet its plan is cheaper, produces less carbon dioxide emissions and uses less water than the draft Department of Energy plans that include nuclear. By 2050, the modelling shows that the nuclear-free plan will cost about R86bn less per year in terms of power generation than the department’s current “base case” plan. Electricity is predicted to be 15%-17% cheaper in 2050 without nuclear.

Based on this, it makes sense not to include new nuclear build in future budgeting. Indeed, the Treasury has been resilient in the face of pressure to go ahead with a 9.6GW nuclear-expansion programme that was suggested in 2010 in the Integrated Resource Plan, which is under review.

If, however, the government does still plan to go ahead with the nuclear expansion, why would it be omitted from the budget speech, given the enormous sums of money involved?

Richard Halsey Kenilworth