Summary on nuclear power in South Africa and Zambia - 2019

Will Africa Now Go Nuclear?

Kelvin Kemm, CEO, Nuclear Africa February 1, 2019

This message is coming from South Africa. It is part of a discussion among nuclear experts in Europe, North America and Africa.

This is a broad brush picture of the nuclear power situation here. South Africa is the only country in Africa which has a nuclear power station. It is ‘Koeberg’ and it is situated close to Cape Town. It has been running for over 30 years and is recognised as one of the best run nuclear power stations in the world. A number of previous Koeberg senior managers and staff (about 80) are currently at the Baraka nuclear plant in the UAE, in significant positions, bringing that nuclear power station online.

Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant, Cape Town, South Africa

SAFARI-1 research reactor, South Africa produces radioisotopes for nuclear medicine that are delivered to 60 countries, including the United States

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South Africa is the same size as the whole of Western Europe added together. To illustrate the point, the distance from Pretoria, where I live, to Cape Town is the same distance as Rome to London. In South Africa we use mostly coal for energy supply, however the coal is all clustered in the far northeast of the country, therefore we're effectively transmitting a lot of coal power 'from Rome to London'. Due to the location of the coal it was decided, about half a century ago, to build the first nuclear power station in the far south.

A few years ago five new nuclear sites were identified and purchased around the Cape Coast. (Atlantic and Indian ocean coasts). EIA investigations were started on them. After years of study finally two were selected as the prime two. The EIA results were completed and submitted to the authorities. One site has been approved by the government. So, in principle we could start construction immediately.

However a Request For Proposals document to partner in building new nuclear power stations was completed to be distributed internationally. At the end of 2017, just as we were ready to send it out, we were then asked to send a shortened preliminary version of it, so as not to upset the Greens. We did that, hoping that we would get the half dozen or so major world nuclear vendors to respond to start the process. We were delighted to find that we got nearly 40 responses. At that point the Greens went to court claiming that public participation processes had not been correctly complied with. (They were wrong). The court then ruled that the responses that had been received could not be officially examined and had to be sealed and stored until further notice from the court. This is the current situation.

South Africa also developed the PBMR small modular reactor to be able to move nuclear inland away from the coast and closer to major mining areas and so on. The project got close to the point of being ready to start building a prototype when the program was placed on hold by the government. They and the public just did not realise the significance of the project at the time.

That was about 10 years ago. Certain work on the PBMR however has continued ever since.

Meantime, if one looks at Africa it will be noted that most African countries are not blessed with oil, coal or gas. In fact many are 100% hydro or nearly 100% hydro. African lakes tend to be like saucers; wide and not so deep. In contrast, hydro in places like Norway is fed from very ‘vertical’- type dams in fjords which also have a regular run-off of melting ice and snow, so the pressure head and dam volume are rather constant.

Not so in Africa. Here a five year drought is not uncommon. South Africa has just gone through one. Dam volumes can fall by 80% plus, and we are talking of very large dams. Pressure head and volume can fall so much in some African countries, that electricity output from the dam falls by more than 50%.

You cannot run a modern economy on such uncertainty. Erratic wind and solar are certainly not a solution. But Small Modular Reactors certainly are a solution. They do not 2

need to be near large bodies of water and can be placed near where the electricity is required, thereby reducing vast African transmission distances.

As a result, in last couple of years, a significant number of African countries have declared their intention of following a nuclear future. With PBMR-size outputs of 100 to 200 MW these are excellent objectives. Last year Zambia started building its first nuclear training centre, including a 10 MW research and teaching reactor.

Lusaka, Zambia. Nuclear research and training reactor construction to begin 2019 with support from Russia.

Zambian nuclear science students in Russia Meantime throughout all of this, the international anti-nuclear (and pro-wind and solar ) lobby has continued relentless attacks and propaganda. They were behind the court case 3

to block the progress with the nuclear RFP, issued a year ago. International lack of public understanding of nuclear also aids the anti-nukes because the public can be led to believe almost anything negative about nuclear.

But here in South Africa sectors of the public are starting to realise that the wind and solar solutions were not originally proposed as good engineering answers, but rather as save the planet from CO2’ solutions.

The international activist groups who propose the RE are not interested in the welfare of the people of African countries, but rather in getting countries to toe their implied ‘save the planet’ mantra.

I happen to be a person who does not believe that human-generated CO2 is the cause of any global warming/climate change. It contributes little to zero of any observed global warming. The warming observed is all much more credibly attributable to the varying magnetic field of the sun, linked to intergalactic cosmic rays.

As pointed out by Andrew Kenny, Earth has been through warming periods before, such as : the MWP, Roman, Minoan, plus ice age cycles, such as the LIA during which people rode horse-drawn coaches across the frozen River Thames. None of those climatic variations resulted from industrial carbon dioxide.

African countries should get past the ‘CO2 danger’ mental block and do what is best for their populations; build SMR systems fast. We have grand plans in this regard, plus the professionals and skills required to implement the plans. We certainly need to train a lot more skilled people, but that is good news for the youth workforce. But the knowledge and ability certainly exist here.

The group of people on this mailing list is doing a great job in attempting to bring nuclear sense to the fore. We need to continue to do that, with as much enthusiasm as possible. Us folks in Africa can do with all the help that we can get, especially since so much of the damaging anti-nuke propaganda and behaviour comes to us from advanced First World countries.

Regards Dr Kelvin Kemm CEO: Nuclear Africa http://www.nuclearafrica.co.za/

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