Koeberg’s chief nuclear officer, Riedewaan Barkadien, has resigned to take up an executive position at a nuclear power station in Canada. Eskom said former Koeberg power station plant manager Keith Featherstone would act as chief nuclear officer from the start of August.
The return of Unit 2 at Koeberg nuclear power station in the Western Cape will bring “enhanced stability to the grid”, said Eskom chief executive André de Ruyter during a media briefing on Monday morning.
But this is only expected to happen at the end of July.
The country’s latest bout of load-shedding has reached stage six.
“At this stage, the 920 megawatts we can expect from Koeberg is scheduled to come back onto the grid by the end of this month,” he said.
Unit 2 has been offline since 18 January for major maintenance that was scheduled for six months.
Five units at Eskom’s Kendal, Tutuka and Majuba power stations underwent emergency repairs over the weekend, causing further generation capacity losses.
Eskom’s chief operating officer, Jan Oberholzer, said these units would return power to the grid this week.
Contributing to the return to level six rotational blackouts was unprotected industrial action by Eskom employees.
The power utility reached a wage agreement with three labour unions last week, bringing to an end what it called a damaging, disruptive and costly wage dispute that has forced it to implement stage six load-shedding, which was last experienced in December 2019.