The unit at the Koeberg nuclear power station that tripped at the weekend, precipitating rolling power cuts in the Western Cape, could be back on stream earlier than predicted, Eskom chief executive Thulani Gcabashe said on Thursday.
He said the reactivation of the unit was running roughly twelve hours ahead of schedule.
However he warned that there could still be delays, and people should not count on full power before the original projection of late Saturday afternoon.
He said the unit, which shut down on Saturday in reaction to outages elsewhere on the national grid, was synchronised with the grid at 4.30am on Thursday, which meant the process of bringing it to ”criticality” –the point at which it started generating — could start.
Just after 7am it was at 30% power.
Gcabashe said tests had to be done while the unit was being brought back to full power, and there was still a risk of it tripping.
He expected a report on repairs to Koeberg’s unit one, crippled in December by a loose bolt left in the generator during maintenance, by the end of this month.
At that point Eskom would know whether it would be able to synchronise the refuelling of unit two, scheduled for mid-March, with the repairs so that there was no gap in power generation.
He said that in parallel processes, one group of engineers were working on repairing the rotor, and another was assessing the quickest way to get a replacement rotor to South Africa.
A rotor — possibly borrowed from French nuclear power utility EDF, which runs 46 units identical to Koeberg — would have to be flown out from Europe, if this was seen as the best solution.
Eskom should be in a position to make a statement on the matter in a week and a half, he said.
Gcabashe said it had become clear over the past few months that there was a need to accelerate development of a second base load station in the Western Cape, in addition to Koeberg.
He said it would be prohibitively expensive to rail in coal, and that there was not enough wind or gas.
”The discussion must now begin on a possible nuclear plant in the area,” he said.
This was one option; another was a power station fired by liquefied natural gas brought in by tanker.
Cape Town electricity spokesperson Charles Kadalie said the city had decided to refurbish the gas turbines at Athlone power station, last used more than a year ago.
He said the turbines would be used for peak generation, and that getting them in proper working order would require ”major repairs”. – Sapa