By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Minister of Energy and Electricity, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says nuclear energy has long been part of South Africa’s targeted energy mix, providing baseload electricity to keep the power system stable while complementing it with renewable energy.
Ramakgopa addressed media on the sidelines of the Nuclear Summit held in Gauteng on Thursday.
“The seminar aims to facilitate a comprehensive understanding of the current state and future prospects of nuclear energy in South Africa through open, objective and scientifically informed discussions and research endeavours.
On the sidelines of the first Cabinet Lekgotla of the seventh administration earlier this year, Ramokgopa emphasised the long-term need for nuclear energy.
“In the long term, we need to ensure that we anchor the baseload and nuclear is an important part of that intervention. We are working on the framework for procurement because we don’t want to discredit the process through a procurement process that is not transparent.
“We will do it at the scale and speed that we can afford as a country,” he said.
Last month, the Ministerial determination for the procurement of some 2 500MW of nuclear energy was withdrawn however, according to Ramokgopa, iremains firmly part of South Africa’s energy mix.
“Nuclear is part of the future but it’s important that as we go out…the procurement process must be able to stand the test of time. In this instance, it’s the ability to be able to subject itself to scrutiny, “Ramokgopa said at the time.
Environmentalists including the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute, Earth Life Africa and the Democratic Alliance had challenged the procedural fairness and legality of the determination in the high court.
Ramokgopa told a nuclear summit that developing 2500 megawatts of new nuclear energy generation, as highlighted in the Integrated Resource Plan 2019 (IRP 2019), is firmly on the table as part of the country’s future energy mix.
He said the government’s recent withdrawal of the January 2024 gazette of a ministerial determination to procure nuclear power under the Electricity Regulation Act was to ensure the public participation process is transparent, “clean” and “democratic”.
Ramokgopa said that although renewable energy is ascending in use and popularity there remains “little conversation” about nuclear power from scientists.
“Where are the nuclear people? Because we’ve got the sterling record of 76 years of contribution to the science and technology, at least to the extent that nuclear is responsible for power … for purposes of electrification,” he said.
“We have entered an arena and a period in this evolving energy complex, of lobbyists, of those who ‘appropriate to themselves, the know-how’ of a technology, and they’ve got the capacity and the potential to … undermine and discredit a technology not supported by science and evidence.”
Ramokgopa said the scientific community had a duty to dispel “these myths” regarding dangers of nuclear power.
The minister said politicians and policymakers had also “soiled” the reputation of the technology “because of allegations of malfeasance, leakage, corruption, manipulation” and the wasting of money.
“This is what nonscientists that don’t have a scientific basis use to push back and invalidate the argument,” he said.
Ramokgopa said the government would announce its next steps regarding its nuclear energy plans “in the next week or so”, because some of the underlying assumptions, such as Eskom’s generation performance, highlighted in the IRP 2019 plan have changed.
“If there are complexities, or the process of the 2500MW build programme is compromised, and on our own version, having studied the process objectively, we find that it is compromised, we have a duty to pull it back, to clean it so that you don’t conflate the science and the process. Because when you misstep on the process, you are inviting legal practitioners to enter the domain of science,” he said.
In a virtual address, International Atomic Energy Agency director-general Rafael Grossi argued that there was a growing acceptance of the technology’s role in meeting the net-zero objectives, following the scepticism that had arisen in the wake of the Fukushima disaster of 2011.
“Some people say there’s a nuclear renaissance. No, I don’t think so. I think there is a return to realism,” Grossi asserted.
He said that was reflected in the COP28 declaration, which included a commitment to advance a global aspirational goal of tripling the nuclear energy capacity of 2020 by 2050.