South Africa’s decision to invest in a nuclear power future has raised concerns about what will happen to the nuke waste generated. Last week it emerged that nuclear power would account for about half of Eskom’s planned new generating capacity.
At present South Africa’s nuclear waste policy is vague and does not list a clear end-plan of what will happen to high-level nuclear waste.
Earthlife Africa nuclear activist Mashile Phalane is worried about how the government will deal with nuclear waste. He says South Africa’s nuclear waste management is weak.
“At the moment the government is only reinstating the shelved apartheid government nuclear strategy,” he says.
The Cabinet approved a radioactive waste management policy in 2005, but it did not identify a deep-level depository, the final resting place for high-level nuclear waste. The document has not been approved by Parliament yet.
Solly Phetla, spokesperson for the department of minerals and energy, says in terms of the strategy used nuclear fuel is not waste because it can be reprocessed and 95% of materials recycled, with only 5% high-level waste remaining to be disposed.
Phalane believes the government is focusing on a Namaqualand site as a possible solution for the high-level waste. For the moment the waste at Pelindaba and Koeberg is stored on site. Medium- to low-level waste is buried at the Vaalputs site in the Northern Cape.
In answer to a question about whether there are plans to expand Vaalputs, Phetla says only radioÂÂactive waste that meets the acceptance criteria of Vaalputs will be disposed of at Vaalputs.
Pelindaba has been storing nuclear waste from as far back as 1965. About 45 000 drums of low-level nuclear waste are stored at its Pelstore facility. There are questions about whether the Thabana trenches, the facility for storing high-level nuclear waste at Pelindaba, complies with international standards.
The department says Koeberg’s used fuel is stored in authorised used-fuel pools on site, as well as in casks designed and constructed for storage of used fuel. It believes there is enough storage capacity for the current operational lifetime of Koeberg.
Eskom announced last week that it would increase South Africa’s nuclear share of power generation from 6% to 30% by 2030. This would add 20 000MW of generating capacity to South Africa’s overloaded grid. The nuclear growth plan is estimated to cost between R255-billion and R400-billion.
By 2012 South Africa will have at least one other operational nuclear power station, apart from Koeberg. Sites the government is investigating are at Bantamsklip in the Western Cape, Thyspunt near Cape St Francis in the Eastern Cape and Port Nolloth in the Northern Cape.
The government hopes that after 2012 its hugely expensive pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR) programme will have its ducks in a row and plans to build 24 small 165MW nuclear plants by 2030. Each PBMR plant is expected to produce up to 32 tons of high-level waste a year.
Without a final destination for the waste, the spent fuel will be stored in dry storage tanks for the power station’s first 40 years.
Phalane says Eskom’s announcement is premature as public consultation on the proposed sites was poor.
“The communities don’t want nuclear projects in their backyards,” he says.
But Eskom’s chief executive, Jacob Maroga, says it makes sense to invest in nuclear power in the face of climate change and the fact that South Africa is sitting on 10% of the world’s uranium reserves.
South Africa is not the only country that is moving towards nuclear power. Last week during a visit to South Africa, the United Kingdom’s chief scientific adviser, David King, said if emission gas that caused global warming was controlled, nuclear had a huge role to play.
Last year the World Nuclear Agency said there were a total of 442 operable commercial nuclear power plants in the world, with 28 still being built and 62 in the planning phase. A further 160 had been proposed by different ÂÂgovernments, with India and China taking the lead.
Nuclear waste is an international problem, with most governments struggling to find an end-solution for their high-level nuclear waste.
The first deep final repository in the world is expected to be commissioned only some time after 2010. In the United States the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level waste storage facility remains unbuilt.
In Germany, prior to 1990, the ÂÂGorleben village close to the former German Democratic Republic was seen as the Germans’ final answer to their high-level waste problem, but after protests a final decision was also postponed.