Environmental lobby group Earthlife Africa’s Pretoria High Court bid to block plans to build a pebble-bed modular reactor at Koeberg on the Cape West Coast was delayed once again on Monday.
When the hearing was due to start on Monday afternoon, Angus Stewart, for Earthlife Africa, told Judge Frans Mojapelo that he had not yet received the answering affidavit from the director general of environmental affairs, the first respondent in the matter.
He asked that the matter stand down until Tuesday, which Mojapelo granted.
The pebble-bed modular reactor is a nuclear-powered generator that uses tennis ball-sized pellets of uranium, rather than the long rods of conventional reactors, and is cooled by helium instead of water.
Earthlife Africa’s Cape Town branch brought an urgent application to the court last week for an order to prevent Director General Chippy Olver from giving permission for the reactor to be built.
The organisation also wants the court to order Olver to provide it with all the information on which he will base his decision.
Liz McDaid, Cape Town co-ordinator for Earthlife Africa, said in an affidavit that her organisation had only been given the opportunity to comment on the draft environmental impact report on the project, but not the final one.
Among its comments on the draft report were that the safety, economic and waste impacts of the project had not been assessed and that it was inconsistent with government policy, she said.
”The final environmental impact report contains new information that the applicant and other members of the public have not had an opportunity to comment on.”
This included the safety and security impact assessment, to which Earthlife Africa was refused access earlier.
In terms of the Constitution, Earthlife Africa had a right ”to an environment that is not harmful… to health or well-being”.
McDaid said: ”The applicant, its members and all other people who reside in the Western Cape and whose interests the applicant represents, would be prejudicially affected by an adverse decision of the first respondent [the director general].”
The failure of the director general to afford Earthlife Africa a hearing before making his decision was in conflict with the provisions in the Constitution about fair administrative action, she said. – Sapa