Nuclear fears lie in those devilish details

It’s crucial, we all know, in important debates to question your own bias. I am adamantly against building new nuclear plants in SA, for a whole range of reasons I will explain.

Yet there are a number of very smart people in SA who see it not just as the most effective option but also the most cost-effective one. Is it possible they are right and I’m wrong?

I’m against nuclear power for two main reasons: SA’s arms deal and my own experience with solar power. Some years ago, my wife and I absconded from city life and moved to a very beautiful patch of the Karoo. It’s wild and barren and free and pulls at the innermost workings of your soul. Most South Africans, indeed Africans, I meet intimately know this experience, even if the contexts differ.

Most farmers build their houses close to the road. We didn’t. We insisted on building on a hill deep in the property. So when it came to moving in, we faced a dilemma. Pay an enormous amount of money to string cables from the electricity mains on the road to our property 7km away or take a chance on generating our own. With the naiveté of the uninitiated, we opted to try to do it on our own.

This was eight years ago, long before solar power was a thing. The provider of solar power equipment was located not in an office or a shop, but in a house on a suburban street in George. It was obviously a new venture, with boxes against the walls and the small staff tripping over each other to get to the phone in what was once the lounge.

I bought eight 120w 24v polycrystalline solar panels, then top of the range, at about R6,000 each. Today, this would be considered highway robbery. The top of the range now is a little less than almost treble that power and costs about half.

I also bought a whole set of batteries that were designed for golf carts and an Australian gizmo called a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) device. And I bought a huge diesel backup generator. I couldn’t believe I had dropped so much money on such a risky project in a single day.

Yet the installation was absurdly easy and those solar panels operated and continue to operate with incredible efficiency. I know this because my MPPT device tracks my usage and the power generated. I added a few more panels later, and changed the battery set for batteries designed for purpose. The new batteries are much heavier and have lower voltages. But the panels have generated consistent electricity, at no additional cost, for years now. Once I thought of them as a risk. Now they are a blessing.

They do have problems, though, and this is partly why I wonder if I’m right about nuclear. The batteries are a real challenge; after a few cloudy days, you find yourself constantly checking to see how much power you have left. The extent of power is its own problem, but so is the amplitude. You can’t really use high-consumption items for long periods of time. That means you have to use a gas stove, which is frankly difficult to get and unreliable to use. But we operate two fridges, computers, lights, toasters and all the paraphernalia with consummate ease.

The other reason for being against nuclear is SA’s arms deal. When the original deal was proposed in 1996, it came in a package that included industrial offsets and other blandishments. The original deal was, would you believe it, a mere R4bn. Then it was R8bn. Then R15bn. Then it just exploded. We ended up paying about R50bn. I remember sitting in the Union Buildings with then minister in the Presidency Aziz Pahad and then trade and industry minister Alec Erwin for a “briefing” in which they swore, absolutely swore, there was no fraud “in the main contracts”. Of course there was, in great galloping amounts; so much so that British prime minister Tony Blair had to personally close down the British side of the investigation.

What worried me then was this: why are we, little SA, the buyer? Why would we want to buy anything we didn’t absolutely have to from much, much richer countries in Europe? If they were so keen to help, as they claimed so often, shouldn’t we be selling things to them rather than the other way around?

So it surprised me not at all this week when my colleague Carol Paton dug up the actual estimates produced by external companies for the Department of Energy on what a new nuclear plant would cost. She discovered that the numbers they are presenting were different from the ones in the reports. And, no surprise, the person who got 80% of the R200m spent on compiling these reports was the son of one of the president’s sponsors.

The argument in favour of nuclear rests on the cheap, reliable, environmentally efficient production of baseload power. This is a really good argument.

But actually it’s irrelevant. This is not about facts. It’s about contracts.

THE NUMBERS PRESENTED BY THE DEPARTMENT TO THE PUBLIC ARE DIFFERENT FROM THOSE IN ITS CONSULTANTS’ REPORTS