Watt Now? Nuclear power sparks fierce debate over SA’s future energy mix

With input coming from a range of energy experts, government officials and environmental advocates, a Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) webinar on nuclear energy in South Africa’s energy mix revealed deep divisions over its feasibility and role in the country’s future energy strategy.

The discussion and divisions made apparent on Wednesday follow Minister of Energy and Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa’s announcement in August 2024 that he would withdraw the gazette to procure new nuclear power capacity in response to the “substantive” legal challenges posed by the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg. 

Daily Maverick previously reported that at the end of 2023, the minister announced that all the “suspensive conditions” to start procuring 2,500MW of new nuclear power immediately had been met. 

Speaking on Wednesday, Deputy Director-General for Nuclear at the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy Dr Zizamele Mbambo outlined the department’s position. 

He said South Africa had a well-established nuclear programme with more than 60 years of operational experience, with Koeberg generating power for 40 of those years. He explained that one of the government’s priority objectives was to achieve self-sufficiency across the nuclear value chain, from mining and fuel fabrication to power generation.

“Nuclear energy shall be used as part of South Africa’s diversification of primary energy sources and to ensure security of energy supply. Nuclear energy shall contribute to economic growth and technology development in South Africa through investment in infrastructure, creation of jobs and further development of skilled workers. Nuclear energy shall form part of South Africa’s strategy to mitigate climate change,” said Mbambo.

He argued that nuclear energy provided base-load electricity, ensuring supply reliability and that it created long-term jobs, with new reactor designs extending operational lifetimes up to 80 years. The economic impact was significant, too, the DDG argued, as seen in Koeberg’s contribution to the Western Cape’s GDP in a KPMG study. 

That study assessed the socioeconomic contributions of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station to the Western Cape and South African economies between 2012/13 and 2015/16. The findings indicated that Koeberg added about R29-billion to the Western Cape’s GDP and R23-billion to the national GDP during the specified period.

The price of electricity from established nuclear power plants was also something that made their case compelling, Mbambo said. 

“Koeberg currently produces the lowest cost of electricity on the South African grid. When I talk with the Eskom team, they say the Koeberg operational cost is around 15 cents per kilowatt hour.” It is important to note that while Koeberg’s operational costs may be low, this figure might not include the full lifecycle costs, such as decommissioning and waste disposal.

Read more: Ramokgopa makes the case for small modular reactors and the resuscitation of SA’s nuclear industry

Professor Vally Padayachee, strategic adviser to the Association of Municipal Electricity Utilities, said South Africa’s reliance on coal had led to high greenhouse gas emissions and that municipalities had to balance decarbonisation with a reliable energy supply. Nuclear, he argued, was a dispatchable source of energy and could thus complement renewables. 

“Its integration into the energy mix not only helps municipalities meet their decarbonisation targets, but also complements renewable energy sources which can be intermittent. By incorporating nuclear energy, we can enhance the overall stability of the electricity grid.” 

Padayachee concurred with Mbambo, saying, “Modern nuclear reactors like SMRs are not only baseload sources, they can also operate flexibly to some extent. Advanced designs allow for load following, meaning they can adjust their output to meet changing electricity demand. This capability is particularly valuable during peak demand periods.” 

However, he said, at this stage it was not envisaged that municipalities would build and operate nuclear plants. Instead, they might consider long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs).

Too expensive

Padayachee was followed by Professor Mark Swilling, co-director of the Stellenbosch Centre for Complex Systems in Transition. 

Swilling laid out the state of energy globally, explaining that currently, 61% of global energy came from fossil fuels, 29% from renewables, and 9% from nuclear. By 2050, nuclear’s share is expected to decline slightly while renewables are poised to dominate other sources of energy.

He referred to financial advisory and asset manager Lazard’s data which, widely used by energy modellers, is seen globally as an authoritative source on the costs of generating electricity from various energy sources.

“In order of going from the cheapest to the most expensive, the cheapest is onshore wind still at the moment, roughly between $27 and $73 per megawatt hour. Then to solar PV utility scale, $29 to $92 per megawatt hour. Then coal, $69 to $168 per megawatt hour, then nuclear, $142 to $222. Solar rooftop is very expensive at between $122 and $284 per megawatt hour and peaking is the most expensive at between $110 and $228 per megawatt hour.” 

Read more: South Africa’s fork in the road — does it take the path of nuclear power, or people’s power?

Swilling argued that South Africa’s constrained fiscal environment and lack of favourable financing options made large-scale nuclear projects difficult.

“One needs to ask to what extent can the South African capital markets handle a large-scale investment like this in a major centralised space. And I find it difficult to see where that would come from.”

“Maybe the PIC as a key player could make a strategic decision to change the flow of capital in South Africa, but the bond market really drives everything and the bond market is very much focused on renewables.”

Moreover, many nuclear projects also rely on foreign financing, potentially compromising national energy sovereignty, Swilling said. 

“If we look for international investments and quite often the suppliers of the technology, whether it’s the Russians or the Chinese or the South Koreans or the French, couple their involvement to the sourcing of their financing. And so, my concern is in our new geopolitical context, we need to weigh up.

“We will be partnering with the Russians who are very aggressive in our market through Rosatom and somebody described a Russian nuclear plant as a combination of an embassy and a military base and the financing arrangements tend to lock you in for a very long time into financial arrangements, which compromise your independence.” 

So, the professor argued, the principle of self-sufficiency would be compromised “in our geopolitical world if we become highly dependent for a very long time on external flows of finance into the global financial system in order to build our internal nuclear capacity”.

Professor Sampson Mamphweli, head of the Energy Secretariat at the South African National Energy Development Institute, suggested that one way to reduce the costs associated with nuclear power was to repurpose coal power plants which could, in turn, support the goals of the just energy transition. 

“There have been studies that show that the retrofitting of existing fossil fuel plants is both economically and financially viable. There is one case study in Poland, which has got a similar kind of dependency on coal to that of South Africa, which illustrated 28% to 35% reduction in capital costs … so it starts to make financial sense.” 

Environmental risks

Brandon Abinor, a climate advocacy lawyer and acting programme head of Pollution & Climate Change at the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), said South Africa had a strong legal framework for environmental protection, but nuclear raised a few serious concerns. Among these were the externalised costs that were often not considered or underestimated, such as decommissioning, waste management and even potential disaster response. 

“South African law has got a very robust system of safeguards, risk assessment, risk management and transparency requirements, and it’s obviously critically important that these get applied to nuclear as a prospect, as a component of the electricity system. We want to avoid a situation like we had with coal, which for all its benefits that it brought also created tremendous amounts of harms and impacts on communities and individuals, predominantly as a result of the toxic pollution.” 

“The business case for coal, especially in the later years, really relied on the externalising of costs because it’s either those communities or individuals or the public purse that hold the tens of billions in terms of health impacts as just one component. And this has got to be avoided if we’re considering nuclear,” said Abdinor. 

Only when we stopped externalising these costs could the true cost of electricity be calculated, he said, adding that “we need this full cost accounting to make reasonable and rational choices”.

Read more: A new nuclear build for South Africa is an impractical, economically unviable pipe dream

Abdinor also argued that nuclear offered significant project risks. South Africa’s past megaprojects, such as Medupi and Kusile, suffered significant cost overruns and mismanagement, and the potential for this to happen with a new nuclear build was manifestly present. A failure to address these issues could lead to legal challenges and increased financial burdens, he said. 

Francesca de Gasparis, executive director of the Southern African Faith Communities Environment Institute, argued that from a public interest perspective, nuclear energy presented several issues, including high capital costs and delays, lack of public participation and safety risks. 

She also pointed out that nuclear capacity globally could not come online quickly enough to replace fossil fuel infrastructure, and this would harm the world’s attempt to limit the global average temperature increase to below 2℃. 

“When you look at the crisis of energy needs in South Africa and the climate crisis, nuclear energy just doesn’t come on board soon enough, and there are much more affordable, accessible energy systems that we can bring on more quickly that will meet our energy needs that are affordable and safe.” DM