After the Bell: Not so fast on the nuke plan, Minister Ramokgopa

Putin is still begging for this deal

Ramokgopa appears to be continuing the duplicity of Mantashe by only comparing the operating costs of power plants - Mantashe famously only looked at the costs of the apartheid-era built and paid for coal-fired power plants, not those of the bloated, corrupt Medupi and Kusile. Rampkgopa deserves some credit for trying to get us back on track, but he's blowing it quickly if he goes down this duplicitous route. Can't we just have honest, competent ministers who put the country, not ideology or sleazy foreign benefactors first?

There is a strong case for nuclear energy in South Africa. Renewables have a problem where the higher the percentage of the grid they take up, the more storage you need to even the load. The more storage you need, the more renewable capacity you need, increasing costs exponentially the closer you get to 100% renewable. In most parts of Europe that are big on renewables, the problem is solved with natural gas peaker plants that are turned on when demand is too high or renewable supply is too low. But doing this in SA would entail finding a supplier of natural gas (Probably Mozambique) and building the requisite infrastructure, making a massive and expensive investment into a new type of fossil fuel. Or we could keep burning coal. Or we can build nuclear plants. If a nuclear build project is completed in a competent and corruption free manner, with technology transfer to rebuild the skills base to build our own nuclear power plants once again, it could be good. The problem is that this government cannot pull that off.

The author seems to be pushing solar & wind derived energy. In doing so the author refuses to acknowledge that one of the contributing factors to load shedding was a anti fossil fuel NGO stopped South Africas has generated energy project. This action by the NGO is equally to blame for high unemployment, prices, homelessness, starvation experienced by the people. The author also fails to mention the impact on mining the materials used to manufacture batteries used to store the energy generated by solar & wind. Child labor used, costs etc are also ignored.

One of the hidden costs of nuclear power is the cost of decommissioning the power station at the end of its operating life. The cost is vast because the entire functioning reactor is radioactive, and has to be deconstructed safely by robots or people in lead suits, and the tons of concrete and metal have to be buried in a "safe site". It is a major reason why Eskon is so keen to keep Koeberg running, by extending its life indefinitely. They do not have the capacity, or a budget, to decommission Koeberg Power Station. This cost of decommissioning needs to be included into the real cost of nuclear power per kWh. A cheaper, more sustainable source of baseload electricity production is the use of deep geothermal energy, which is infinitely renewable, using the heat of the earth's core.

Remember that this is the guy who drove the enormous smart meter scam in Tshwane when he was mayor. He should be trusted as much as any other deployee of the glorious liberation movement, i.e. no further than he can be thrown by a female US Secret Service agent on a close protection mission.

Dear Ray, thanks for the fine riposte to the Minister's recycling of the deceptive description of the costs of nuclear power. However, please let us not brand this 'Ramokgopa's nuclear plant' (at least not yet), as he does not have the authority simply renounce the procurement initiative (and he needs to pick his battles carefully) and there is so far no 'plant' under consideration. Rather let us insist that the opening and conduct of the procurement process through the publication of a Request for Proposals (or potentially a more exploratory Request for Information?), which he said would occur towards the end of this year, is a paragon of transparency and the sharing of all information that stakeholders have a right to under a progressive understanding of such rights. This should be test for our Minister of Electricity and Energy with regard to the on-going infatuation with nuclear power by members of our ruling elite: that the information solicited by the state is made available to determine the public interest in this matter, taking precedence over the interests of technology vendors and financiers in protecting what they deem 'proprietary' information.

There is a simple solution to the issue : request bids for nuclear under IPP rules. So their financial risk, no underwrite from taxpayer, and with suitable & insurance underwritten safety measures. You know - they must bid to supply energy at a set price, just like the wind, solar, biomass and gas IPP do… Don’t hold your breath for a flood of bids. At our cost of capital and country risk, the bids would have to come in at over 450c/kWh in 2024 money terms for the bidders to make money and get funding. No IPP will bid.

A good article. But some caveats: Firstly you are correct that cost Ramokgopa gives almost certainly "does not include the build and financing costs". To that I add it certainly does not include the decommissioning costs, which I estimate around 68c/kWh at least, amortising the costs over all the power to be generated over the next 20 years. Decommissioning costs are difficult to pin down and are MASSIVE numbers. Planned timelines for some plants last 50 years! The UK is budgeting 10 billion pounds per nuclear reactor (see "UK Has £10 Billion Per Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning Bottomless Pit"). Koeberg has 2 reactors so we are looking at about R400 billion. Lets be optimistic and take half that number - R200 billion. Koeberg's capacity is 1860 MW. Running for 20 years at a 90% capacity factor it can be expected to generate around 293 million MWh. Dividing the R200 billion by the 293 million MWh gives R680 per MWh or 68 C/kWh. This is a massive oncost we are ignoring! I believe that Eskom, has stashed about R10 billion for decommissioning. This is hopelessly inadequate if one looks at what needs to be done and the costs in other places. Add in BEE et al costs and inefficiencies and the R200 billion looks low. Secondly you say "The costs for renewables will probably have fallen further by the time Ramokgopa’s nuclear plant is built". This is massively understated. The will certainly have fallen! The learning curve, or Wrights Law as it is sometimes called, is at play here. It is like gravity as Tony Seba says. For instance the Tesla Megapack battery cost has halved in the last year. With all the massive research efforts going in this trend will only continue. By the time a nuclear plant has been built it will be ridiculously too expensive compared to renewables.

Agree 100%. Although I am not opposed to Nuclear power, the economics don't seem to support it. SA has incredible renewable power potential versus most other countries, it should lead to cheap electricity, and competitive advantage in industry (if managed properly)! Intermittency has solutions.