As temperatures rise regarding the development of the Koeberg-based Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor (PBMR), South African nuclear engineers have added fuel to the fire by saying that the system is ”walk-away safe”.
According to a statement released on Friday by the South African Institution of Nuclear Engineers, a melt-down such as at Three Mile Island in America in 1979 was impossible.
Said John Walmsley, president of the Institution of Nuclear Engineers: ”(Similarly) a ‘reactivity’ accident such as that at Chernobyl in 1986 (was impossible).
”Fire is credible only if the building is utterly destroyed, for example by a massive earthquake directly under the site — and that is also virtually incredible.”
Responding to safety and other health issues highlighted by the environmental group Earthlife Africa, Walmsley said that sight must not be lost of the PBMR fundamentals.
”Because the system has such intrinsic safety, it does not require the costly engineered safeguard systems that surround conventional reactors. It is therefore significantly cheaper than conventional reactors.”
He said that for the same reason the development would not require extensive emergency planning arrangements and pending decisions by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR), would not ”significantly impede” local development.
Agreeing that the storage of spent fuel had not been adequately addressed, Walmsley said that the NNR’s safety assessment was ongoing and its technical assessment needed to be as transparent as possible.
”Because the PBMR has such excellent safety characteristics, the NNR is almost certain to approve it, perhaps with minor modifications. It will have to explain and justify its decisions to folk who do not understand the technology, who nevertheless know in their souls that it is hideously dangerous, and who already consider the NNR, Eskom and anyone else who understands the system part of an octopus-like nuclear conspiracy.
”Earthlife will never accept that the system is safe. Efforts must be made, however, to draw City technical personnel fully into the process.”
Walmsley said that renewable energy and nuclear energy needed to be developed in parallel, because renewables could never supply ”more than 30%” of the nation’s electricity requirements.
He also disputed some of the anti-nuclear lobby’s claims as ”spurious” with regard to the transport of nuclear materials and as ”groundless and despicable” allegations that isotope strontium-90 and cancer were found in children in the USA.
”Local environmentalists are being duped by information fabricated in the USA. More sympathy can be felt for concern about the ultimate disposal of high level radioactive waste.
”It is entirely untrue, however, to allege that the nuclear industry does not know what to do with it. It will be sealed in rock and it will not endanger future generations.”
Turning to the commercial viability of the PBMR effort, Walmsley said that the world market for new power plant was worth R800-billion per year, a ”tiny fraction” of what would justify the PBMR development.
Friday was the deadline for appeals to be lodged against the record of decision giving the go-ahead for the development by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, with Earthlife Africa and the Legal Resource Centre also teaming up to take the department to court over its decision to approve Eskom’s planned development at Koeberg and the construction of a nuclear fuel plant at Pelindaba. – Sapa