Nuclear fears remain

YOUR recent report “Eskom allays fears on nuclear power” (Cape Times, October 24) refers.

Let me first say I’m not entirely opposed to the use of commercial nuclear power. The operational costs of it might be quite low, okay.

However, there is not one country in the whole world that has established a final storage site to date with regard to the most radioactive waste.

As a matter of fact, spent fuel rods, containing extremely dangerous, highly radioactive plutonium (and not just uranium as your report suggests) are always kept on site, next to the reactors, in fairly small swimming pools in which no human can ever swim.

But where will such toxic material finally and first and foremost be safely deposited for the next thousands of years? Nobody has thus far been able to pass any suitable solution.

A top economic player in the Western world, one of the most technically advanced and successful industrial nations, has already decided to get rid of all its currently operating nuclear power stations by 2022, in less than six years’ time: Germany.

Even though at 52 degrees latitude the impact of the sun is much, much lower than in our sunny South Africa, the ratio of electric power generated by so-called renewable energy accounts for an amazingly high percentage of Germany’s power generation and is set for future growth. True, that certainly comes at a price too.

But would it not be a more reasonable idea to rather invest in renewables than at a later stage have to face expenses that amount to billions of rand when nuclear power stations are going to reach the end of their lifetime and require extremely costly demolition works?