Big Nuclear invited me to breakfast. This was to hear Bertrand Barre, described as one of the foremost experts on nuclear energy and an advisor to Areva, a French company which builds nuclear plants across the globe.
Areva and the United States’s Westinghouse are bidding to build a R88-billion reactor for Eskom. Last week Cabinet gave the green light to a policy document committing the country to a nuclear future.
Barre, who speaks on these issues with great insight and clarity, told the breakfast meeting that South Africa was aiming to meet 40% of its electricity needs from nuclear by 2025.
He acknowledged that this is ambitious. Koeberg supplies about 6% of our electricity at present.
What was truly surprising about Bertrand’s presentation is that he was representing Big Energy, but the entire thing was presented in the context of combating climate change.
It was also mindful of the population explosion of the past century.
The industrial age has seen the world’s population rocket in just 100 years from one billion to more than six billion, with growth projected at a further three billion more by 2050.
By Bertrand’s numbers the population-climate change interface means that we have to double energy production while halving carbon emissions.
He showed a set of graphs which are now well known as a visual representation of how best to combat climate change by dramatically reducing carbon emissions. These graphs show a set of wedges where each wedge makes a contribution, the whole bringing total emissions down to sustainable levels.
Bertrand’s wedges show energy efficiency making the greatest contribution, other contributions coming from nuclear, renewables, using gas rather than coal and the use of carbon capture technologies. Efficiency, many will be pleased to know, is seen as making the greatest contribution.
Bertrand also has a graph, which I have seen several times before, which shows that nuclear power produces fewer emissions compared with alternative technologies, namely solar photo voltaics (PV) and wind power if analysed on a life-cycle basis, meaning that all emissions are considered, including the manufacturing process.
But I continue to read locally of the anti-nuclear lobby asserting that life-cycle analyses show that nuclear technologies are not carbon friendly.
Both can’t be right. I called a number of anti-nuclear activists locally to try to source the original research supporting their claims, being referred from one to the next. Eventually I was mailed a copy of research by a German research body, the Oko-Institut.
Its life-cycle analysis compares hydro, wind, gas, coal and nuclear as sources for electricity generation.
Coal is off the map, but nuclear has lower emissions than PV and is similar to wind power.
Bertrand’s data, sourced to the International Atomic Energy Agency, shows a similar picture, with nuclear emissions being more or less the same as hydro and wind, followed by solar PV and wood, then gas, oil and coal.
Bertrand cited Finnish data to show the comparative costs of nuclear, coal, gas, peat, wood and wind to produce electricity, the analysis including capital, interest, operating and maintenance, fuel and carbon capture in the case of coal, gas and peat.
Based on reported figures, the cost of coal-fired power in the case of Medupi is about R18-million a megawatt and R27-million for nuclear.
The giant solar towers under investigation for setting up in the Kalahari are an estimated R30-million a megawatt.
Nuclear will continue to have its detractors, particularly around issues of safety and security as well as waste disposal, even while the industry manages to increase the amount of spent fuel which it recycles.
The detractors are also likely to continue to find their voice while policy appears to continue to favour the big and centralised. Coal and nuclear have a well-resourced champion in Eskom, while renewables, Cinderella-like, don’t even make it to the breakfast table, never mind the ball.
Powering up
Eskom wants 20 000MW of its installed base of 80 000MW planned to be in place by 2025 to be nuclear, says Tseliso Maqubela, chief director for nuclear energy at the department of minerals and energy.
Its installed base at present is 40 000MW.
”Eskom’s policy is for 50% of new power station capacity to be nuclear,” says Maqubela.
PBMR units could account for 25% of the 20 000MW, he says. At 165MW for the mini-nukes, this would mean about 30 units deployed around the country.
Eskom currently has bids from Westinghouse and Areva to build the country’s next nuclear plant of between 3 200MW and 3 500MW. This would be two Areva plants of 1 600MW each or three Westinghouse plants of 1 100MW.
Government does not want to talk costs as that could influence the bidding process. A Finnish plant priced four years ago which is being built by Areva came in at €3-billion (about R36-billion) for 1 600MW.
Cost overruns amounted to a further €600-million to €700-million (R7,2-billion to R8,4-billion) meaning that the cost could be in the region of R44-billion or R88-billion for a plant twice this size as specified by Eskom.
This compares with R80-billion for the 4 500MW coal-fired Medupi plant.
The proposed nuclear plant is a more advanced version of the pressure water reactor (PWR) used at Koeberg.
Maqubela says that government’s view is that there are hundreds of years of fuel available for nuclear.
He says exploration is continuing and new findings, such as in Kazakhstan, are being made.
He says that, based on the projections of mining companies, South Africa has all the uranium it needs and that legislation provides for a restriction of exports if necessary to ensure security of supply.
The bidding process still has to be adjudicated. There also has to be an environmental impact assessment and for the licensing process to be completed by the national nuclear regulator. Maqubela sees construction beginning in 2010 and taking five years to complete.
If you hate the idea of nuclear, move inland. Water shortages mean that all future nuclear stations will be built at the coast, with Eskom at present scouring suitable sites in the Northern, Western and Eastern Cape, but not, somehow, KwaZulu-Natal.