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Cape Town - Nuclear expert Dr Kelvin Kemm on Friday challenged a theory that South Africa does not need more nuclear power stations, which, it was claimed, would be too expensive for the country whose demand for electricity was waning.
The chairperson of state-owned nuclear firm Necsa was responding to a critical opinion piece in the Business Day by Prof Anton Eberhard, who is an adviser on the cabinet war room to solve South Africa's electricity crisis.
South Africa can’t afford nuclear energy and doesn’t require it in its power generation mix, Eberhard explained.
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By Kelvin Kemm
Prof Anton Eberhard of the UCT Graduate School of Business launched a scathing attack on the South African nuclear power programme.
He opened his opinion story with the words: “It is time for the gloves to come off.” This opening showed instantly that he intended an attack and was not aiming for a reasoned analytical approach.
His broadside was full of errors and omissions. Many of the omissions seemed to be intentional, aimed at leading readers to a false conclusion.
Let us try to project a genuine true image to readers so that good decisions can be made in the best interests of the country and all its citizens.
Right now Eskom’s cheapest electricity is from the Koeberg nuclear power plant, near Cape Town. Eberhard discounts this fact with the flippant statement that Koeberg is “old generation technology”. This is nonsense. Koeberg is a generation II and the new nuclear reactors will be generation III+, but Koeberg is demonstrating why nuclear is profitable. It was designed like that, intentionally.
Nuclear costs more to build the capital plant up front, but then it is inexpensive to run for more than half a century. Over the plant lifetime, the consumers benefit.
That is exactly what Koeberg is now demonstrating, that nuclear delivers inexpensive electricity to the country. It is not reasonable of Eberhard to just discount this reality, with the argument that Koeberg is old technology. Koeberg runs really well.
The new nuclear technology is even better. It is cheaper to operate, with much more enhanced safety features, than the earlier technology. So the new reactors will be even better than Koeberg. Very credible research carried out at North West University has shown that electricity from the new nuclear power project will cost no more than electricity from coal power. Their results have been professionally published for international scrutiny.
Now we must have a look at so-called renewable energy, such as solar and wind. In reference to energy like wind and solar, Eberhard says: “Granted, this is intermittent power and will need to be complemented by gas power plants.” The ‘intermittent’ is very, very, very important. You only get solar in the daytime, and you only get wind power when the wind blows, you cannot change that reality.
So you can’t just quote the supposed cost of wind power by measuring what comes from the wind turbine. You have to say what amount do you charge the consumer, for a continuous reliable electricity supply.
That means that some other source has to be coupled to the wind power. Eberhard mentions gas, but conveniently omits to mention that gas is incredibly expensive. He also does not say where the gas will come from. Will it be imported? If so, how much will be stockpiled, and where? These important considerations he skips over.
So the supposed wind energy has actually to be viewed as a composite wind and gas system. So the price of electricity from a wind/gas system has to be quoted. This figure is far higher than the cost of nuclear electricity.
Corruption
Eberhard states: “The onus is on those who support the procurement of nuclear power stations to demonstrate that this initiative is not corrupt.”
Why should the supporters of wind not have to show that wind power is not corrupt? So the professor says that South Africa will get 2.5 GW of hydro power from the proposed Inga 3 development in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Who is guaranteeing that this is not corrupt? The power will have to be imported, thousands of kilometres, like through Angola. Who is guaranteeing that nobody in Angola will be corrupt?
Somehow Eberhard has some idea that nuclear power people are corrupt by nature. This is an insult. Or maybe he feels that people in the Treasury are all totally honest when contracting wind power, but instantly become corrupt when they see the word ‘nuclear’ cross their desk.
He says that the nuclear programme will cost “more than half a trillion rand when we raise just more than a trillion rand annually in taxes to fund all SA’s needs”. This is wrong.
The ‘half trillion’ or in normal non-emotive language, R500bn, is the budget for a nuclear project to build three complete power stations over a 10-year period. Each power station will have two or three nuclear reactors per power station.
How come the professor just sort of forgot to mention that the nuclear power budget is for a 10-year project? How come he sort of forgot to mention the localisation target of 50%? How come the professor says that the costs of nuclear decommissioning are not taken into account when they are; for both Koeberg and the new nuclear stations?
South Africa right now needs to project to the world an image of a stable platform for domestic growth and international investment. An essential element of this is to show that there will be a stable, large scale, reliable electricity supply available to industry, well into the future. We need the nuclear power programme for this.
The nuclear power programme will also instantly provide a large number of jobs and career enhancement opportunities for South Africans right across the country. South Africa has an impressive collection of highly competent internationally respected nuclear professionals, who are doing their best for their country. They are not a bunch of incompetent, uncaring imbeciles, as the anti-nuclear fraternity loves to make out.
* Dr Kelvin Kemm is the chairperson of Necsa. He is a nuclear physicist and CEO of Nuclear Africa and is a member of the Ministerial Advisory Council on Energy (MACE). Views expressed are his own.
