The government has given the final go-ahead for the production of nuclear fuel for the controversial Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project at Koeberg, and for the transport of both this fuel and the raw material used to produce it.
This follows Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk's dismissal of several appeals against his department's earlier approvals of the project.
The nuclear fuel will be manufactured by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) at a pilot plant within its Beva complex at Pelindaba in North West.
The raw material for the fuel will be transported to Pelindaba from Durban, and the manufactured fuel will be brought from Pelindaba to Koeberg.
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Meanwhile, the closing date for comments on the Revised Final Scoping Report for the project has been extended to March 10. Scoping is the first phase in the statutory environmental impact assessment (EIA) process.
The extension was welcomed by the Cape Town branch of Earthlife Africa.
The organisation had earlier expressed "outrage" at the four-week comment period for the highly technical, 633-page report, which it described as "attempts to curtail public participation in decision-making" about the PBMR project.
A former director general in Van Schalkwyk's department, Chippy Olver, issued a positive record of decision (RoD) approving the application to manufacture and transport the nuclear fuel in June 2003.
He issued a positive RoD to Eskom Holdings Limited at the same time, approving the environmental aspects of the proposed PBMR project at Koeberg. He linked the two decisions with a clause stating that the authorisations were dependent on each other.
There were appeals against both RoDs but, before any decision was made, Earthlife Africa successfully challenged the RoD granting in respect of Eskom's application to build the PBMR at Koeberg in a review action in the Cape High Court.
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