‘SA engineers a must on new plant’

THE SOUTH African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) has insisted that foreign companies would not have carte blanche in the construction of the new nuclear power plant.

Necsa chairman Kelvin Kemm told members of the portfolio committee on energy yesterday that the winning bidder would be working with South African engineers on the project.

This iss not the first time local engineers will be involved in a project of this nature.

A number of foreign companies, from Russia to France, the US and South Korea, are bidding for the nuclear tender worth about R1 trillion.

Kemm said they would be working together with the foreign companies.

Energy Minister Tina JoematPettersson has yet again delayed the announcement of the request for proposals pending the finalisation of consultations. Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor first broke the news South Africa was going to miss the September 30 deadline for issuing the proposals. This was later confirmed by JoematPettersson, who said they were still busy with consultations.

Cost and scale

The government has refused to state the costs of the nuclear build programme, but President Jacob Zuma said in his State of the Nation address in February that this would be based on the cost and scale South Africa could afford.

Kemm said the nuclear reactors would be built by South Africans with one of the winning companies. “When Koeberg was built… it was the South African engineers at the time who said this is what we want.”

He told Parliament the same principle would apply when the project got under way.

He said South Africans would issue instructions to the winning bidder on how they wanted the nuclear reactors to be constructed.

Kemm said South Africa was one of the top countries in nuclear technology.

Koeberg was built 40 years ago and it is a 2 000 megawatt plant.

South Africa wants a 9 600MW nuclear build programme.

ANC MP Thandi Mahambehlala warned Parliament that it should not get directly involved in the procurement process in the nuclear build programme.

She said Parliament had never in the past been involved in procurement processes and it should be no different this time.

DA MP Pieter van Dalen had cautioned against the involvement of Eskom as the lead agent in the procurement.

But Mahambehlala said it was not the business of Parliament to interfere in matters of procurement.

She said the national legislature had never been involved in these matters, and it should keep it that way.