Eskom will decide within six months whether to commission a second nuclear power plant to supplement its Cape Town Koeberg plant, Business Day‘s website reported on Wednesday.
Phumzile Tshelane, Eskom’s technical strategy manager, said the company was looking at models of light-water reactors from French and United States suppliers, and one type of heavy-water reactor from a Canadian supplier.
”We will make the decision in less than six months … Nuclear will be the option we are going for at Eskom in the near future,” Tshelane said.
The new plant would be located on the South African coast. The company was looking at potential sites in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape.
The cost of the project would depend on the type of plant chosen, Tshelane said.
Koeberg has been beset by outages blamed on damage to transmission lines and operational problems after a misplaced bolt crippled the rotor of one of the plant’s two reactors.
The past weekend saw a nuclear reactor shutting down automatically because of a fault on the turbine control systems. It was back in operation by Tuesday. – Sapa