Durban - The process to determine who will be South Africa’s strategic partner in the bid to generate almost a quarter of the country’s energy needs from nuclear power plants will start within the next month.
At a press conference in Durban on Tuesday, the energy department’s deputy director general for nuclear energy, Zizamele Mbambo, revealed that the process to acquire more nuclear plants would fall under the department and not the country’s troubled energy utility, Eskom.
Mbambo said that by the end of the financial year end in February 2016, a decision would have been made on which country or countries would be South Africa’s strategic partners to help it achieve its aim of supplying 23 percent of its energy needs from six nuclear power plants by 2030. The process to determine who would be the strategic partner would begin later in July or early in August.
During the past year there has been much speculation as to who would get to build these plants, with China, Russia and France being touted as partners at different times.
However, Mbambo said that although the country had numerous deals and agreements to train people in places like Russia, China, South Korea and France, no final decision had yet been made and bidding had yet to start.
“The procurement process has not been made. It will begin in the second quarter of this [financial] year,” he said.
The government hoped to have the first reactor going online in 2023 and Mbambo was confident that government would meet its target.
Mbambo announced that 50 people had been sent to China for “nuclear training” while Russia had offered 10 new scholarships for a masters degree in nuclear technology. Students were also being trained in South Korea while France announced a programme offering 14 bursaries for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
He said intergovernmental agreements had been signed with South Korea, China, Russia, France, and the United States while there were negotiations to sign agreements with Canada and Japan.
Mbambo said these countries had expressed an interest in South Africa’s “nuclear new build programme”.
“Each one of these IGA’s lays the foundation for cooperation, trade and exchange of nuclear technology as well as procurement.”
Details of these agreements were not revealed at the press conference. Mbambo said that the government was in the process of addressing recommendations that were contained in the Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR) report that was submitted to government in May 2013.
This report has never been made public, and Mbambo told journalists that it would “soon” be made public, without specifying when.
One of these recommendations, according to Mbambo, was the appointment of a “procuring agency”, which he announced would be the energy department. Mbambo said government had finalised its contracting strategy, but said he could not reveal what it was because it would “be premature” and limit the government’s “leverage” during negotiations to do so.
He said that all bidding and tendering processes would operate in accordance with government regulations. Studies on how to finance the building of the nuclear plants had been completed and were “undergoing approval process”, Mbambo said.
Government was happy that the plants could be funded, but that these funding figures could not be revealed and Mbambo said that any funding model would also include and take into account the decommissioning of nuclear power plants.
Phumzile Tshelane, the chief executive of the SA Nuclear Energy Corporation, said that no decision had been taken on how to deal with nuclear waste. Spent nuclear fuel could currently be sent for reprocessing or for storage.
The are currently only three countries that have the ability to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, he said. These were France, the United States and Japan.
ANA