If we had to oppose everything to which there are potential drawbacks, we wouldn’t make any progress at all. South Africa needs a diverse energy mix, and nuclear is one of the most promising elements in that mix.
The Department of Energy is forging ahead with renewed plans for a nuclear power station in South Africa. Rather more modest than the 9 600MW plans shot down by the courts in 2017, the new plan involves a 2 500MW plant, to be added to the existing 1 800MW at Koeberg.
This week, it held public hearings in Cape St. Francis and Jeffrey’s Bay, near Thyspunt, which has emerged as the front-runner as a potential site for a future nuclear power plant. Yesterday, the nuclear regulator approved the plans.
There are good reasons to support the idea of exploring new nuclear energy, and a few good reasons to oppose it. The benefits outweigh the risks, however.
Safety
The knee-jerk reaction of many environmentalists is to oppose nuclear power on principle. People tend to be irrationally afraid of it, even though nuclear is one of the safest sources of energy known to humanity.
A lot of the fear is based on ignorance. People hear ‘radiation’, and think all radiation is dangerous, and any amount of radiation exposure is too much.
In fact, natural sources of radiation are everywhere, including in our own bodies, especially our bones. The biggest sources in our bodies are carbon-14 and potassium-40, but the human body also contains trace amounts of uranium, thorium, radium, tritium and polonium.
Radon is radioactive, and it is in the air we breathe. There’s radiation in the rocks, soil, concrete and bricks around us. It’s in our food. It’s in plants and animals. It’s in the water we drink, and it comes from the sky. All of these sources are far bigger than the exposure people who live close to nuclear power stations or nuclear waste facilities receive.
Coal-fired power stations release orders of magnitude more radiation into the environment than nuclear power stations do, and it spreads from coal-fired power stations in fly ash; inhaling radioactive particles really is dangerous.
On balance, coal is 350 times more dangerous than nuclear energy, and natural gas is 40 times more dangerous. The safety profile of nuclear power is comparable to those of wind, hydro-electric and solar energy.
The only really significant safety incident in history has been Chernobyl. Even at Fukushima, only one person died of radiation exposure, eight years later. It is inconceivable that anything like Chernobyl could ever occur again in the modern world with modern reactor designs and modern safety practices.
Judging the nuclear industry by Chernobyl (or even Fukushima) is like judging the jet airline industry by the safety record of the original De Havilland Comet.
Advantages
Nuclear has a few significant advantages compared to competing renewable energy sources. Once they’re built, nuclear power stations produce steady, reliable and low-cost electricity for many decades – two or three times longer than the expected life of solar or wind farms. Koeberg, for example, has been producing Eskom’s cheapest electricity, by a country mile, for 37 years.
Plans are underway to extend its 40-year lifespan by another 20 years, and new nuclear plants come with a 60-year life expectancy from the start. By comparison, typical renewable energy plant life expectancy is a mere 20 years.
Unlike wind and solar, nuclear also has negligible land requirements. It does not despoil vast landscapes, does not kill birds and bats, and does not cover extensive areas of land in shade.
The future of nuclear technology is also exciting, with smaller, modular reactors in the offing that are more flexible, inherently safe, and able to supply both base-load and peaking power.
Criticisms
Critics believe that nuclear is unaffordable for South Africa, but that is equally true, on a per-unit basis, for any other form of electricity. That alone cannot form the basis for opposing new energy projects. Without new energy projects we’ll never be able to afford anything in future, either.
Nuclear power plants are expensive to build, but relatively cheap to run, and they run 24 hours a day for many decades. According to the World Nuclear Association, nuclear power is cost competitive with other forms of electricity generation, except where there is direct access to low-cost fossil fuels.
It can, of course, end up being much more expensive. That is true for any large project, however. The Medupi coal-fired power station, for example, was originally supposed to cost R69 billion. Delivered many years later than planned, the official cost has almost doubled, to R135 billion. An independent estimate in 2019 put the actual cost as high as R234 billion.
It will be important to hold government accountable for managing the project, but that is equally true for all new energy projects.
Likewise, the project could (and probably will) fall prey to corruption. Again, that is a universal concern, and not a reason to oppose nuclear power in particular. It happens with coal-fired power stations, but also with renewable energy contracts.
One ray of hope is that work won’t commence before 2024, which gives citizens the opportunity to vote the corrupt ANC out of power, first.
That the operators at Medupi managed to blow up a generator only nine days after the plant was declared fully commissioned also raises the spectre of safe operation.
Nuclear, however, operates under a far more stringent safety regime than coal does. There are international regulations and safety guidelines under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Association, a treaty organisation which reports to the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council.
Nuclear power plant construction is vendor-led, and vendors are highly sensitive to the public image of nuclear power. Worldwide, nobody cares about the Medupi explosion, but if the same were to happen to a new nuclear power station anywhere in the world, the entire global industry would come to a grinding halt. Again.
South Africa has an excellent nuclear energy skills base, which has operated Koeberg through thick and thin – under two very different regimes – without any significant incidents. Local nuclear engineers are well-respected globally.
Pursuing the dream
South Africa needs a diverse energy mix, and nuclear is one of the most promising elements in that mix. This is true globally, too. The dream of a green, emission-free world is well-nigh impossible without nuclear energy.
If we had to oppose everything to which there are potential drawbacks, we wouldn’t make any progress at all.
The challenge will be to mitigate the potential risks of a new nuclear programme, such as cost overruns, corruption and mismanagement, while exploiting the undeniable benefits of safe, clean, affordable and reliable electricity that nuclear energy offers.
[Image: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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