Molefe: SA can't do without nuclear
Cape Town – There is an urgent need to build more nuclear power plants in South Africa, Eskom CEO Brian Molefe said on Wednesday.
“We do not think it is possible to have an energy mix without nuclear,” he told Parliament.
“The nuclear programme is feasible,” he said. “It has a life beyond 60 years and the payback period is 20 years.
“It feasible to fund and operate further nuclear plants in South Africa,” he said. “It is urgent that we do so.”
The average age of Eskom’s base load fleet is 34 years and is dominated by coal power stations, which South Africa wants to ditch to improve its CO2 emissions.
A successful renewable energy independent power producer procurement programme has started to revolutionise the way power is generated in South Africa, with 6 327 MW procured since 2010. Environmentalists want this amount to increase – while changing electricity usage behaviour - to ensure coal and nuclear are not needed.
However, Treasury allocated R200m to the Department of Energy to focus on researching nuclear energy funding models in October.
In the meantime, various countries have entered into intergovernmental agreements with South Africa to become vendors for a planned 9 600 MW nuclear energy programme.
No load shedding until May next year
In the same presentation Molefe said there likely will be no load shedding until at least May 2016.
While maintenance on Eskom's ageing fleet has been increased, the power utility has managed to stave off implementing load shedding for more than 80 days.
“We are doing all that maintenance without load shedding,” Molefe said. “We will step up our maintenance in December as everyone goes on holiday. We will add quite a lot of units to the maintenance programme to catch up on backlog.
“We do not anticipate load shedding until at least the 30th of April,” he said, adding that Eskom is working on overcoming the maintenance backlog ahead of the winter season. “We know when those problems will occur, so we know when to put plans in place.”
Molefe told Parliament that Eskom was celebrating 50 days of no load shedding and 87 days where only two and a half hours of load shedding took place.
“After July, load reductions and load shedding has been very minimal,” he said.
“Going forward it won’t be necessary to update (the public on these daily load shedding stats), as having electricity will become a normal thing,” he said.
While Eskom has been congratulated on alleviating load shedding, electricity usage has dropped dramatically since the start of 2015. This has raised concerns that Eskom has avoided implementing load shedding because of this drop in usage.
News24 voices blogger Dwaine van Vuuren on Tuesday wrote that the examination of the data from Stats SA gives the real reason for no load shedding.
"Electricity output has plummeted because DEMAND has plummeted dramatically to 2008 recessionary levels. Not a good sign for the SA economy," he wrote.
Fin24
