A feasibility study is under way into a second nuclear power station to provide relief for the blackout-plagued Cape, the public enterprises ministry confirmed on Friday.
Gaynor Kast, spokesperson for Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin, was reacting to a report that Erwin had said the new plant would be sited at Koeberg, alongside the existing power station.
”We are considering a nuclear plant. There is a feasibility study under way to determine the cost and the location,” Kast said.
”Reports that it’s going to be at Koeberg, and that it’s going to cost R16-billion, are mere speculation at this stage.”
Kast also released the text of a speech given by Erwin at a nuclear-industry conference in London earlier this week.
In it Erwin said: ”In addition to the PBMR [pebble bed modular reactor] we are giving serious consideration to another large nuclear plant to strengthen the southern areas of our grid.
”Rapid economic growth in the Eastern and Western Cape provinces is placing great pressure on our transmission grid. Whilst new-peaking and mid-range plants will alleviate pressure in the next year or so, a new base-load plant is essential and a nuclear plant has to be examined.”
The Western Cape has been hit by a series of crippling blackouts as the troubled Koeberg facility and overloaded transmission lines from power stations in the north of the country struggle to meet the province’s growing demand for electricity.
Erwin reportedly told the electronic news service Platts Nuclear News that the feasibility study for the new plant began late last year, and would take about two years to complete.
In his speech, Erwin also painted a rosy picture of the PBMR project, confirming that the government envisaged establishing as many as 30 of the mini-reactors in this country.
He said the introduction of the PBMR could not have come at a more economically opportune time.
”Its positive attributes from an environmental point of view and its potential link with hydrogen production add immensely to the attractiveness of this technology,” he said.
He said the PBMR would ”reduce dangerous emissions”, and that its waste was ”very highly manageable, produced in small amounts that can be stored without harm to people or the environment”.
The initial PBMR project entails the building of a demonstration reactor at Koeberg, and a pilot fuel plant near Pretoria. According to the PBMR website, construction of the demonstration plant is scheduled to start in 2007 and be completed by 2011.
The first commercial PBMR modules are planned for 2013.
Investors in the company running the project are the government, Eskom, the Industrial Development Corporation and United States nuclear giant Westinghouse.
Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu would be available for comment on Monday, his office said. — Sapa