Dispute over Koeberg upgrade tender

POWER utility Eskom has denied an allegation by nuclear power company Westinghouse that it had made false claims in a court battle over a R5billion tender.

An update on scheduled power outages at the Koeberg nuclear power station‚ which was circulated to service providers in August‚ is at the centre of a legal dispute between the companies.

There are fears that Eskom intends to delay the replacement of six steam generators at Koeberg.

The replacement project is the subject of a lengthy court battle between Westinghouse‚ the losing bidder‚ Eskom and French company Areva‚ which was awarded the tender.

When the case was argued before the Constitutional Court‚ one of the disputed issues was whether an installation delay would pose a nuclear safety risk or would put the national grid at risk.

Eskom said the current steam generators were fast approaching the end of their lifespan and needed to be replaced in a production outage scheduled for 2018. It argued that even if the court found the tender should have been awarded to Westinghouse – as had been decided by the Supreme Court of Appeal – it should leave in place the award to Areva for the sake of safety and the national grid.

After the Constitutional Court had heard the case‚ Westinghouse sought to introduce new documents into evidence which it said contradicted those claims.

The evidence included a 10-year production plan and a letter from Koeberg general manager Riedewaan Bakardien‚ signed on his behalf by plant manager Kevin Engel.

Shortly after the evidence was filed in court‚ the two were suspended.

The plan revised the plant’s outage schedule and shortened the length of the 2018 outage. Westinghouse said this showed Eskom did not intend the steam generators to be replaced during the 2018 outage.

Eskom said the documents did not support Westinghouse’s “unfounded and self-serving claims”‚ which were based on “misplaced deductions and a mistaken interpretation” of the documents.

Eskom said its official position was recorded in the contract between Eskom and Areva and in minutes of Eskom’s nuclear management committee: the steam generators were to be replaced in the 2018 outage.

The production plan did not say when the steam generators would be replaced. Instead the replacement project was excluded from the plan.

It would be “slotted in the first available outage‚ even if a special outage needs to be made available”‚ Eskom said. — BDLive