The nuclear option is back
As hearings begin about Eskom’s plans for a power plant at Thyspunt, here’s a guide to how three presidents have dealt with the 20-year question of SA’S never-ending energy problem
More than two decades since Thyspunt in the Eastern Cape was identified as a possible site for a new nuclear plant, Eskom is still forging ahead with its long-held ambitions.
Next week the National Nuclear Regulator will hold public hearings at Thyspunt, 22km from Jeffreys Bay, after Eskom applied for a nuclear site licence in 2019..
If approved, the Thyspunt plant may form part of government’s new nuclear power proposal, which could see it procure 2 500 megawatts (MW) of additional nuclear power by 2030.
Nuclear power, though no longer mired in politics, is still polarising, with some arguing it will get South Africa to its clean energy goals faster and others saying it is unsafe, unaffordable and unnecessary.
Last month Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe told a virtual meeting of the Presidential Climate Commission that nuclear power alongside renewables will set the country on the path to securing a cleaner, more reliable power system.
“Because the majority of renewable energy does not have the baseload, a combination of renewable energy and nuclear provides a balanced approach.”
Nuclear lobbying has heated up amid Eskom’s plans to decommission its coal-fired plants by 2030. Mantashe’s argument is one punted by nuclear lobbyists, who over the years have come up against a public made cynical by reports of corruption linked to South Africa’s previous trysts with the energy source.
Knox Msebenzi, managing director of the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa, said this week the reason for the slow transition to nuclear power is “purely politics”.
“Not economics. It is not environmental. It is pure politics and, to some extent, self-interest … We could have built a nuclear plant, as was the plan, and I have argued that South Africans would have never known load-shedding.”
Koeberg nuclear station has been operational since 1984 and supplies about 5% of the country’s electricity.
A tender to expand nuclear capacity was jettisoned in 2008 because of Eskom’s financial woes. At the time, it was estimated the deal was worth $12-billion (about R100-billion at the time).the expansion was part of Eskom’s plan to manage South Africa’s carbon footprint by generating 20000MW from nuclear reactors by 2025, more than 10 times Koeberg’s output at the time. The plan stemmed from a 2007 proposal that foresaw a power shortfall. A year later the country was struck by load-shedding.
In the week the government was finalising the 2008 nuclear deal, the Jacob Zuma-led ANC removed Thabo Mbeki as South Africa’s president and Eskom withdrew the tender.
The deal and Mbeki’s removal were linked to reports of French lobbying. At the time French-owned mining and energy company Areva and the United States consortium, Toshibawestinghouse, were competing for the nuclear power tender. Areva denied lobbying Mbeki and Zuma.
In 2011, the Mail & Guardian reported that the government was soliciting bids worth R1.1-trillion for the construction of six nuclear plants. A contract of that size would have accounted for as much as 20% of the world’s total nuclear spending over the two decades that followed.
The 2011 tender was again accompanied by reports of French lobbying. But the thirst for nuclear power was spoiled by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan that year.
Financing new nuclear stations, and building other new-generation capacity outlined in the 2010 iteration of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), would push tariff increases to 20%, Eskom said at the time.
A 2013 iteration of the plan was not signed by the cabinet. The M&G reported at the time that this was because the plan said there was no need for a decision to be made on nuclear energy until 2025 at the earliest.
A year later, the M&G broke the story that Zuma personally negotiated a nuclear deal with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Sources said Zuma went on a secret visit to Moscow before returning to instruct the then energy minister, Tina Joemat-pettersson, to sign a deal with the Russians on the sidelines of the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.
Earlier in 2014, Joemat-pettersson said her department had set aside R850-million to undertake further research and development into nuclear energy, especially regarding nuclear safety matters.
At the same time, Russia’s stateowned nuclear agency, Rosatom, said in a statement that it had clinched a deal with South Africa.
A legal battle ensued and in 2017, the Western Cape high court ruled that the secret tabling of the intergovernmental agreements with Russia, the US and Korea were unconstitutional and unlawful, and that they be set aside.
This week Msebenzi said antinuclear lobbyists have used the politics around Zuma and state capture “to equate nuclear to corruption”.
But, he said, the argument has now shifted. “That argument has been
set aside. The focus is now on cost. Those who are anti-nuclear will say: ‘You are burdening our children with thousands of years of nuclear waste’. But that is not a problem. You will hear them say that nuclear is unaffordable,” Msebenzi said.
“The toning down of the corruption argument is because Zuma is gone and now they’ve got a government, which is seemingly pro-renewables.”
Earthlife Africa’s Makoma Lekalakala, who helped build the coalition to stop the 2017 deal in court, said: “It is clear that we cannot afford to go nuclear at all. Besides the fact that we cannot afford nuclear in monetary terms, we cannot afford the disruption that always comes with a nuclear plan.”
In a joint submission to the National Nuclear Regulator on the Thyspunt plant, Earthlife Africa and the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute noted a presentation made by Eskom chief executive André de Ruyter to the Presidential Climate Commission late last month.
One slide of De Ruyter’s presentation states that the power utility supports the government’s plans to roll out new nuclear power, but it will not be able to build any plants because of its inadequate balance sheet. “Given that Eskom has indicated that it is unable to build new nuclear power stations, and having regard to the fact that a nuclear authorisation is not transferable, Eskom’s NISL [nuclear installation site licence] application has been rendered academic and meaningless,” the submission reads.
The submission also points out that the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan makes no allocation of new nuclear electricity generating capacity in its long-term strategy up to 2030. The IRP does, however, include a policy decision to “commence preparations for a nuclear new build programme to the extent of 2500MW at a pace and scale the country can afford”, the submission notes.
In June last year, the department of mineral resources and energy issued a request for information to test the market for the successful
implementation of a new nuclear build programme. According to a presentation to parliament in February, 25 companies responded and only 11 provided overnight costs for the programme, leaving the question of funding open-ended.
At a May meeting of parliament’s mineral resources and energy portfolio committee, Mantashe conceded that, at present, the country cannot afford 2 500MW of nuclear power.
But, the minister noted, the money available for any technology does not depend wholly on the fiscus. “It depends on the appetite of the market for that technology. And if there is appetite for that technology, you will find that many people will come and build those power stations for you.”
Des Muller, the co-spokesperson for the South African Nuclear Build Platform, which advocates for a nuclear procurement programme, said a nuclear power plant may be more costly to install than a wind or solar farm, but the quantum of
power delivered, the jobs it creates and its 75-year safe operating life makes it worth the initial price tag.
Because of robustness and safety requirements, nuclear energy should have a higher capital cost than other clean, but intermittent, energy, Muller said. “The effect nuclear energy has on reducing load-shedding and decarbonising our grid over the next 75 years overshadows these higher costs.”.
“Nuclear energy and renewable energy are both clean and low carbon energy sources, but nuclear energy delivers its rated power for over 90% of its life while renewable energy delivers its rated power for 30% of its life, although weather dependant. That’s the key differentiator and what makes nuclear energy a perfect replacement for retired coal power plants.”
Muller said the reliability and affordability of nuclear energy makes it more user-friendly than other clean energy options. “Flexible
nuclear power can also balance the intermittency of renewables while delivering high volumes of clean water and hydrogen, thereby raising its value.”
He added: “With nuclear energy, the operating and fuel costs are so low, that in spite of higher capital costs, the cost of electricity is competitive. Koeberg is a great example where, once the capital costs are paid, nuclear energy delivers the lowest cost, cleanest and most reliable electricity in the country for decades.”
Muller noted that nuclear energy is easy to finance through various funding models at low interest rates from the country of origin. This helps balance the long construction lead times (six years) and keeps the electricity tariff competitive, with no backup system costs.
Gaylor Montmasson-clair, a senior economist at Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies, said nuclear power is a bad choice to replace coal for many reasons.
“Cost is a big one, of course … Even if you ignore all the problems that come with building massive power plants, which go overtime and over budget, and the issue of nuclear waste, it is quite clear that building up nuclear energy is not the favourable option for the country.”
South Africa has options “that are more sustainable, be it economically, socially, environmentally and, of course, financially”, he said. “And I think that’s quite clear.”
Montmasson-clair noted that there are several recent studies that all indicate that renewables are currently the lowest cost option to replace coal.
“The baseload need at its peak can easily be achieved through a mix of renewable energy — solar and wind — supported by batteries and gas. That’s quite clear and has been shown on a technical level,” he said. “And for me what is interesting is that on top of that, it’s not just technically feasible to avoid nuclear and coal, it is actually better from a financial perspective.”
The most recent study, by the National Business Initiative (NBI), advocates for the adoption of renewables with a combination of gas and batteries to take over as South Africa’s baseload. This, the study notes, will allow for flexibility in the energy system, reduce emissions and supply electricity at least-cost.
According to the NBI study, the envisioned supply mix will cost 100 cents a kilowatt hour (c/kwh) in 2050 in real 2020 terms and produce about 70 megatonnes of CO2 emissions. The renewable energy dominant system is significantly cheaper than the comparable 70 megatonne coal and nuclear systems, which cost 129c/kwh and 116c/kwh respectively.
The study recommends that the government update its policy stance to have no new coal and no new conventional nuclear built to 2030 and beyond.
Jesse Burton, a senior associate at E3G and the Energy Systems Research Group (ESRG) at the University of Cape Town, has crit
-cised the use of the term “baseload” to describe certain kinds of plants that can supply power in large, continuously available quantities.
A single plant can’t meet the entire base demand of a power system, Burton said. “You will always meet that demand from multiple plants.
She explained that when people refer to the need for a baseload plant, what they are saying is they believe that only certain kinds of plants can be reliable in a system. But, said Burton, what is really needed are plants that can be turned on and off when needed.
“Power systems do need what we call flexible, dispatchable capacity … So what you need, alongside mostly new renewable sources in the system [because they are the cheapest new option], is to have more flexible kinds of plants that can complement those renewable plants.”.
But these plants also need to be more cost-effective. “Coal and nuclear are very capital intensive and inflexible. So once you build them, you also want to run them flat out because you want to pay off all the money you’ve invested; plus historically they were not really designed to be ramped up and down.”
In response to the ministerial determination on the procurement of the 2 500MW, the ESRG conducted cost modelling which, like the NBI, found that new nuclear “is not a least-cost or effective way to meet climate policy or development goals”.
The ESRG also found that the additional need for power sector investment to procure the 2 500MW of nuclear power “competes with other more productive investments in the South African economy and combined with the increased electricity price leads to a lower GDP of minus 0.5% to minus 0.8% by 2030 compared to a future without procurement of new nuclear power”.
“At least for now,” Burton said, “it is much more cost effective to build mostly wind and solar, with some flexible capacity, than it is to build the nuclear. And we can see that up until at least the mid-2030s.”
If, by then, newer technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors that may fulfil the need for flexible power generation, have become cheaper, “then you can reassess whether nuclear makes sense in the power system”, she said.