Far from being ‘unaffordable’, nuclear power is the most economic source of grid electricity for South Africa. The most unaffordable are solar and wind, which are everywhere staggeringly expensive, and which have forced upon South Africa the costliest and worst electricity in its history.
Last week the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) published a request for Information into the building of 2 500 MW of new nuclear power plant in South Africa. (Koeberg, our most reliable power station, has a capacity of 1 940 MW). It asked potential nuclear vendors around the world what they had to offer. Such a modest first step is preferable to the previous intention of 9,600 of nuclear, which some people assumed would be in one giant leap and led to silly speculation about costs running to ‘a trillion Rand’.
Some in the anti-nuclear lobby responded with hostility. They don’t want us to be informed on nuclear power. They don’t want us to know that nuclear is the safest of all energy sources, with a lesser waste problem than renewables. They don’t want us to know the true costs of nuclear. They prefer to scream about Fukushima and ‘the unsolved problem of nuclear waste’, and to invent absurd costs for nuclear. In April 2017, anti-nuclear groups were successful in a court action to stop DMRE proceeding with Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) on nuclear co-operation. This was a preliminary to issuing Requests for Proposals, where we would invite open, competitive tendering from vendors around the world to build nuclear plant here. The anti-nuclear establishment did not want openness and transparency.
Astronomical amounts of money
Last week I looked up the production of renewables and nuclear in the United Kingdom (UK). The UK has an old nuclear fleet, with an operating capacity of 8 923 MW. It has poured astronomical amounts of money into an enormous fleet of modern wind turbines, onshore and offshore, with a total capacity of 22 058 MW, over twice that of nuclear. On 15 June this year, the huge number of wind turbines was producing 95 MW of electricity, while the aged nuclear fleet was producing 4 317 MW. At other times, in an unpredictable way, wind might be producing over 10 000 MW. This presents an expensive nightmare for the wretched engineers trying to control the UK grid. The UK authorities who understand the problem are said to be close to panic. Meanwhile the old nuclear stations continue to churn out cheap, reliable power for the people of Britain.
It is a similar story in Germany with her calamitous ‘energiewende’. South Australia tried the ruinous combination of wind, solar and a ‘flexible energy source’ (gas), recommended by our Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. The result was soaring electricity prices and two total state blackouts. Then South Australia spent a fortune buying the world’s biggest battery from Elon Musk. It proved useless for storing useful energy.
Our own renewable programme, REIPPPP, compels Eskom, in 20-year contracts, to buy renewable electricity at 215 cents/kWh while its own selling price is about 100 cents/kWh. This is the minor problem. The major problem, never discussed or even mentioned in our disastrous Integrated Resources Plan, is the enormous ‘system cost’ required to accommodate the unreliable, intermittent, wildly fluctuating renewable power into the grid without plunging the whole country into blackout.
The more wind and solar, the more expensive your electricity. Germany and Denmark, with a big fraction of renewables, have the most expensive electricity in Europe. France, which gets three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear, has among the lowest.
Monstrous tsunami
In March 2011, a monstrous tsunami struck the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan. The reactors all shut down as designed but the tsunami swept away power lines and stopped the pumps from cooling the reactors down safely. They were badly damaged and radiation was released. The nuclear authorities were to blame for not designing against such a tsunami. The total number of people killed by the radiation was zero (although people did die in the forced evacuation).
Meanwhile, across the sea in Baotou, China, ordinary people were suffering cancer, skin and respiratory diseases, and infant abnormalities from the terrible, long-lasting pollution caused by the mining of materials used in wind turbines in Europe. The pollution included heavy metal toxins such as cadmium, which remain dangerous forever. It also included thorium, which is radioactive with a half-life of 14 thousand million years. (With such a long life, its radiation is trivial but I mention it to counter nuclear opponents who cite long-lived nuclear waste.) The Baotou wind disaster was far worse than the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Economic decline and Covid-19 have reduced electricity demand, and to some extent blurred the fact that Eskom has wrecked our electricity supply since 1994. Our coal stations, which produce over 90% of our electricity, are in bad repair. Solar and wind, as their record shows, are useless. If our economy is to recover, if we are to reduce our catastrophic unemployment, if we are going to build up our industry, we shall need lots more reliable electricity. Nuclear is the best choice.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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