Eskom fingered in Koeberg report

Because of this and the fact that it has breached its license conditions, the parastatal could see its licence conditions re-evaluated.

Eskom's failure to respond to warnings and vital equipment that has not been tested for years have also been blamed for the power interruptions that occurred from November 2005 to February this year.

These findings are contained in the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) final draft report of which City Press, sister publication of Fin24, has a copy.

The report said the six major incidents that occurred during the four month period could be equated to an entire blackout in South Africa lasting for four hours.

Nowhere in the report however is there mention of sabotage at the Koeberg power plant.

Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin caused an outcry when he went on record blaming sabotage for the outages.

He said a loose bolt was found in the generator.

He later withdrew the statement and said he would not become involved in a "semantic debate" over the cause of the damage to the Koeberg nuclear power station.

Asked for comment on the report, Erwin's spokesperson, Gaynor Kast, said: "We can only comment on public documents. Minister Erwin will make a statement to parliament regarding the investigation on Thursday, August 17. We will issue a statement thereafter.

The Nersa report stipulates that there were three breaches of licence conditions at the Koeberg unit including that the automatic voltage regulator at the plant was last tested in 1996.

Other findings include:

• The November 11 incident - there was negligence on the part of personnel who did not allow proper instructions and procedures.

  The generator protection systems that operated incorrectly resulted in the unnecessary loss of load for unnecessarily long durations.

• The November 16 incident - the implementation of corrective measures were not adequate and that recommendations were not implemented for remedial measures suggested in 2002 that would have prevented the problem.

• The November 23-26 incidents - there was negligence on behalf of staff and that corrective action was inadequate. It also indicated that problems identified some time ago had still not been fixed.

Nersa has recommended that punitive and corrective measures be taken against Eskom, in cases where there was transgression, and that Eskom's licence conditions be re-evaluated.

In the report, however, Eskom maintains that it has not breached any of its licence conditions, nor has it been negligent.

Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu said it would be difficult to comment until Eskom was presented with the copy of the final report.