Cape Town - The government has confirmed it is shopping around for its nuclear build programme and says it is consulting “nuclear vendors” in the US, South Korea, Russia, France, Japan and China.
The announcement by the Department of Energy yesterday comes weeks of controversy about the multibillion-rand nuclear project since it emerged last month that a R1-trillion agreement had been signed with Russia, followed by another with France.
The department said the government was consulting “nuclear vendor countries” with pressurised water reactor nuclear technology, similar to that used at Koeberg.
“South Africa has been safely using this technology for the past 30 years,” it said.
“As part of the pre-procurement phase and preparation for the roll-out of the new nuclear build programme, the government has entered into several negotiations with vendor countries and has signed intergovernmental framework agreements with the Russian Federation and France.”
South Africa had also signed agreements with the US and South Korea.
“It is envisaged that the Minister of Energy, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, will be signing similar agreements with China during the first week of November and Japan later.”
The National Development Plan required it to do thorough investigations on “various aspects of the nuclear power generation programme before a procurement decision is taken”.
The plan is to add 9 600 megawatts of electricity to the national electricity grid.
“These planned vendor parade workshops form part of the government’s technical investigation in preparation for a procurement decision,” the department said.
DA leader Helen Zille has said the nuclear co-operation agreement with France, signed by Joemat-Pettersson on Wednesday, is nothing more than a “decoy”.
“This is… to muddy the waters and divert attention from the Russian deal negotiated by President (Jacob) Zuma and signed by Minister Joemat-Pettersson last month.
“We are led to believe a similar agreement with the Chinese is next and that a proper procurement process has yet to begin, but all evidence points to a done deal with the Russians. No amount of obfuscation can allow our focus to shift from this.” - Cape Times