Skip to main content

South Africa to Build Second Nuclear Power Plant

By Eric McErlain
Yesterday in Cape Town, South African Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin announced that the nation would soon build a second nuclear power plant, and that the decision on a "preferred bidder" would take place before the end of the first quarter of this year. The new plant will be rated at 1,000 MWe.

Fans of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor shouldn't get excited, as the new plant will be of the current Generation III+ variety currently being built around the world. Though the exact site of the new reactor has yet to be determined, Erwin indicated it would be in one of the Cape provinces that have been hit hard by rolling blackouts.

In conjunction with Erwin's announcement, both he and the nation's energy minister declared uranium to be a "strategic mineral," meaning...
"In this regard," said Mr Erwin today, "we are developing a uranium mining and beneficiation strategy."

Such a strategy would enable South Africa to "beneficiate" - add value to - the raw material of uranium rather than to import the enriched fuel, the raw material for which it has in abundance.

This would be more cost-effective for South Africa, Minerals and Energy Minister Bulelwa Sonjica told BuaNews today, "so we would beneficiate our own mineral".

Declaring uranium a strategic mineral, she added, would lead to more controls over its production and exportation to ensure that South Africa has adequate reserves of the mineral in years to come.

"We can't export uranium when we want to embark on a nuclear programme," she said.

"We want to ensure that all the time, when we need it, we have reserves in store."

That would be strategic way of dealing with it, she said, adding that there would be limitations on the export of uranium.

"We'll be managing it very carefully," Ms Sonjica said.
You'll recall that we first reported this possibility last August. Separately, Eskom announced a number of renewable energy projects for the Cape totalling about 350MWe in capacity.
Labels:

Comments

Rod Adams said…
Here is a prediction - Westinghouse will win the contract for the second conventional nuclear power plant in South Africa with a sale of an AP-1000.

Any takers for a wager?
February 14, 2007 at 10:42 PM
Matthew66 said…
My bet is that Areva (nee Framatome) will get the project, as it did with Koeberg. That is assuming that there are sufficient operational similarities between the two 900 MW units at Koeberg and the 1600 MW EPR Areva now markets to provide operational synergies.

Fortunately for the South Africans, there are enough vendors competing for business that they are likely to get a very good deal.
February 16, 2007 at 1:12 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

By
The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …
1 comment
Read more

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

By
A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.


What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nuclear Plant Closures Are a Crisis for Small Town USA

By
Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot.

Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed, because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo.


From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example:

Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had to cut its municipal budget in half. The town closed its police department and let the county take over; the youth sports teams lost their volunteer coaches, and Vernon Elementary School lost th…
Post a Comment
Read more