Despite the government’s R500 million investment in nuclear technology, South Africa has no final policy to deal with nuclear waste.
No deep-level depository, the final resting place for waste, has yet been identified by the government. All waste is currently stored on-site at Pelindaba and Koeberg.
”No nuclear waste has left Pelindaba since it began operating,” said Piet Bredell, waste manager at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation. ”The government has not yet formulated a final plan of what to do with nuclear waste. All we can do is store it until then.”
The Department of Minerals and Energy published a draft radio-active waste management policy for comment in 2003. Nothing has been heard of the draft since.
Pelindaba is storing nuclear waste from as far back as 1965. About 45 000 drums of low-level nuclear waste are stored at its Pelstore facility, used as a uranium-enrichment plan until decommissioned in 1995.
Bredell also revealed that the facility for storing high-level nuclear waste, the Thabana trenches, did not comply with international standards. ”It is not that it’s not safe,” he said. ”The international community raised the bar for high-level storage facilities.”
Thabana was recently renamed after workers dubbed it ”Radiation Hill”.
Bredell said that when the government identified a suitable site, the high-level waste would be relocated from Thabana to a deep-level depository, most likely in the Northern Cape.
Earthlife Africa has repeatedly cri-ti-cised the government for approving and investing in the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) without a plan for dealing with nuclear waste.
Earthlife’s Richard Worthington said there was concern that the authorities were taking so long to finalise a plan. Industry favoured underground storage, and the government apparently leaned towards this option.
”We want an above-ground facility in order to monitor the waste,” he said. ”The corporations who produced the waste should be its guardian for life — responsibility should not pass to government.”
Tom Ferreira, the PBMR’s communication manager, insisted the first 40 years of waste storage would not pose a problem, as the PMBR plant could store the spent fuel in dry storage tanks for the power station’s expected lifespan. However, he conceded that the lack of a final policy had been a ”small Achilles heel”.
The PBMR reactor will generate about 35 tons of spent fuel pebbles a year, of which 1,5 tons will be depleted uranium.
Meanwhile, nuclear expert Kelvin Kemm shed light on the government’s recent furious attack on Earthlife during a media tour of Pelindaba last week. ”Irresponsible rumour-spreading” could adversely affect international perceptions of South African nuclear technology such as the PBMR, which could be a huge money-spinner for the country, Kemm said.
Ferreira said that a ”conservative” 2 % share in the world’s $100-billion power-station market would generate $2 billion (about R12 billion) a year for South Africa, making the project highly profitable.
The company also planned to bid for the $1,1 billion hydrogen production project at the Idaho National Environmental and Energy Laboratory, opening up the United States energy market to the South Africa.
Repeated attempts to get comment from the goverment failed.