The pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR), Eskom’s controversial nuclear electricity generation programme, has received a R500-million rescue package from the government after failing to attract a strategic foreign partner.
According to the Department of Trade and Industry vote in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, the amount was an unforeseen and unavoidable expenditure.
The vote reads, in part: ”The PBMR Company had planned to secure external financing from a strategic partner but this did not materialise, jeopardising the integrity of the project plan.” The vote notes the socio- economic benefits of the investment.
Critics of the project have repeatedly pointed to its failure to secure foreign investment as a sign that it will never be economically viable.
Eskom lists as some of the benefits the ability to generate electricity on a smaller scale and thus an ability to locate power stations according to demand.
The PBMR demonstration model will be located at the Koeberg power station, 32km outside Cape Town.
The project, 10 years and R1-billion in the making, has attracted controversy at every turn. The latest was at the end of last year, when the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism gave the project the go-ahead.
The decision was met with 87 appeals, which are still being heard.
Lance Greyling, environmental spokesperson for the Independent Democrats, has called for the project to be scrapped, branding it ”a dangerous white elephant”. Greyling said funds could be used for research into renewable energy sources.
Eskom spokesperson Karen de Villiers described the allocation as a ”nice surprise” but noted that Eskom has no information about how it is to be used. The project requires R10-billion, R3,5-billion of it from a foreign partner. In 2002, the American energy company Exelon pulled out of the project, while the Industrial Development Corporation and British Nuclear Fuel have come in.