Melanie Gosling
Environment Writer
NATIONAL Treasury says no provision has been made in the budget for the next three years to fund the proposed fleet of new nuclear power plants.
Treasury acting deputy director-general Anthony Julies said the discussion in Treasury now about the proposed nuclear programme was focused on the financial implications for the country if it were to proceed
“If a decision is taken to go ahead, and the political and financial implications are clear, at that point it will be factored into the budget process,” Julies said.
He was part of a media round table discussion on energy on Friday with Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown and Eskom officials.
Speaking afterwards, Julies said if the nuclear programme did go ahead, one of the issues that would have to be thrashed out was how this would affect electricity tariffs.
Irrespective of the type of funding model government decided to adopt, the public would foot the bill through taxes and electricity tariffs.
Asked if the reported one trillion rand price tag for the proposed new 9600MW of new nuclear power sounded accurate, Julies replied it sounded “a little steep”.
However, when Eskom head Brian Molefe referred to the proposed nuclear programme during the round table discussions, he referred to a cost of one trillion rand.
“My instincts are the future benefits will far outweigh the costs,” Molefe said.
Malcolm Simpson, the project manager of the cabinet’s “war room” set up to tackle the electricity crisis, said there has been a “huge response” to the request for expressions of interest in opening up the gas sector. More than 400 had sought details.
Minister Brown said the current electricity crisis was the result of a previous lack of investment in power generation, compounded by insufficient planning by both government and Eskom.
Keeping the lights on at all costs between 2008 and 2010 had been done at the expense of maintenance to the ageing power stations.
“The difference now is we are trying to keep the lights on and making sure we do maintenance regularly and on time,” Brown said.
One of the first things Molefe had done as chief executive was to “move managers into the power stations” to oversee the maintenance.
“We’ve run the plants quite high… like an old car they are all worn out,” Brown said.
While Eskom had made progress with the maintenance backlog, the country was not yet out of the woods.
Nuclear Intelligence Weekly reports that France’s state-owned utility EDF, the largest nuclear operator in the world, has announced that the commissioning of its Flamanville nuclear power plant has been delayed to 2018. It is now six years behind target.
The 1 750MW Flamanville nuclear plant, which was estimated to cost 8 billion euros in 2012, is now estimated to cost 10.5 billion (about R160bn).
Nuclear power’s share of global power generation has dropped from between 16 and 17 percent of world electricity in 2000 to between 10 and 11 percent today.