Cape Town - Civic rights organisation Outa on Thursday said it believed the case for building new nuclear energy reactors had been dismantled after the energy minister's advisors told public hearings there were cheaper viable options. "Following input provided by numerous entities at Wednesday's Integrated Energy and Resource Plan (IEP and IRP) draft documents, Outa believes the rationale for any plans to introduce nuclear energy into South Africa's electricity grid has been removed," Outa's portfolio director Ted Blom said.
He said the first day of hearings on the draft resource and energy blueprints had shown that they contained serious flaws in their assumptions of the prices of different energy technologies and that there was a need to for the IRP base case scenario to use the cheapest options.
The base case scenario advanced in the IRP provides for South Africa to add 20 gigawatt of new nuclear energy by 2050 and Eskom has said it would it go to the market with a request for proposals by the end of the year still.
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A team of experts that advised Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson challenged this conclusion and said their input was ignored.
Business Day reported that members of the panel of 40 experts told the hearings that the department's decision to impose artificial constraints on how much renewable energy could be added to the grid, as well as outdated pricing had allowed nuclear into the model.
Outa chairman Wayne Duvenhage said the hearings had already yielded valuable input for the final IRP and he did no see how it could support the government and Eskom's plans for nuclear expansion.
"Personally, I cannot see how the final IRP-2016 document will be able to suggest the inclusion of even one kilowatt of energy being generated through nuclear. If nuclear energy is indeed forced into the system, the DOE's credibility will come under serious scrutiny."
Outa has called on the department to allow more time for public submissions.
"We remain concerned that the DOE is trying to force the process to be complete by the end of March 2017, which we believe will not be sufficient time," Blom said.