Another question is whether expanding nuclear power threatens South Africa’s ambitious renewable energy program and can co-exist on the grid with intermittent energy sources like wind and solar.
“This is not a technology that works well with intermittent resources,” Ochs told AFKInsider. “To ramp up a nuclear power plant and then drive it down again to take it off the grid — even with hypermodern ones, it takes two or three days.”
Nuclear, wind and solar energy won’t necessarily compete against each other, said Frost & Sullivan’s van der Waal. “At this stage, they want to diversify the energy mix and move away from 90-percent coal to a variety of other technologies as well. But maybe, in short, I think we can’t afford nuclear and that there are better alternatives that we should consider.”
If you want to address intermittency, natural gas is the smartest way to go because — almost like a stove at home — you can turn the gas on and off and in a very short response time, Ochs said. “And from an economic standpoint even more so, because these (nuclear plants) have to run all the time. So then that leads you to a situation where you have a lot of wind or solar and you’re producing at peak and you can’t use this electricity because you have your nuclear power plants on.”
South Africa’s $37-billion proposed nuclear plan has attracted nuclear power firms around the globe. It would be South Africa’s single biggest procurement to date.
“The next step really is about the announcement for the procurement process.” Msebenzi said. “The government has its own timetable and we in the industry are very eager to hear it, but we will not pressure the government to make an announcement.”
So far, France’s Areva, Toshiba’s Westinghouse Electric Corp., China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Corp., Russia’s Rosatom Corp. and Korea Electric Power Corp. have all expressed interest.
The fact that Eskom — the South African electricity public utility — is nationally owned may have a lot to do with the heightened interest in South Africa’s expensive nuclear power plant expansion.
“In a privatized market, you wouldn’t find a company that really would be willing to do this,” Ochs said. “It’s two things really: it’s the scale, it’s the simple amount of how much these things cost, and secondly the investment risk that goes with it, which is a long list of risks that you’re confronted with if you build a nuclear power plant.”
The upfront cost is substantial, van der Waal said. And with the long life of a nuclear power plant, there’s a lot of security and natural disaster issues that need to be managed.
China, which already signed nuclear development agreements with South Africa in 2006 and 2010, has expanded those agreements. The draft China agreement in February includes skills development and capacity building, research and development, the new nuclear build program, supplier development and localization, joint marketing, supply of nuclear energy products and infrastructure funding to promote regional nuclear power developments.
South African students will be able to attend Chinese universities to study nuclear energy, according to a skills development agreement signed Feb. 25. by the South African Nuclear Energy Corp.; the China General Nuclear Power Corp. and the State Nuclear Power Technology Corp.
Russia is also aggressively seeking a piece of South Africa’s nuclear expansion.
At the March 2013 BRICS summit, Zuma and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a joint strategic partnership agreement.
And Russian state-owned firm Rosatom, which opened a marketing office in Sandton in 2012, and accounts for 17 percent of the global nuclear fuel market, also signed a skills and capacity-building agreement in November 2013.
Following South Africa’s lead, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana are moving forward with their own nuclear programs.
Nigeria is the furthest along towards the introduction of nuclear power to deal with its energy deficit. It began work on its first research reactor at Ahmadu Bello University in 2004.
Nigeria is building a national nuclear power infrastructure, F. Erepamo Osaisai, CEO of the Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Agency, told the International Atomic Energy Agency at an annual meeting in September. The site of the country’s first set of nuclear power plants has been narrowed down to two: in Geregu/Ajaokuta in Kogi State in the North-Central zone, and Itu in Akwa Ibom State in the South-South part of the country. They are undergoing further detailed evaluation and assessment.
