Your ignorance is offensive

Published Dec 22, 2014

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IN Business Report of December 8, Bishop Geoff Davies wrote a silly and offensive open letter to President Jacob Zuma concerning nuclear power. Davies stated that Zuma was being “led astray” by “untruths put forward” by the nuclear professionals of South Africa.

I am a nuclear scientist and proud of it. I am a South African and proud of it. It is offensive to me and many professional nuclear power associates to be accused of intentionally telling untruths.

Does any thinking person really believe that all the nuclear professionals of South Africa have colluded together to collectively produce a fraudulent picture to the government? Davies also accuses “a senior Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) spokesman of perpetuating the myth”. I can assure readers that if any of my many professional nuclear associates were to discover any senior Necsa person intentionally telling untruths to the government, we would collectively “blow the whistle”. Davies also clearly shows that he has no understanding of the reality of energy supply.

The renewable energy (RE) debate serves as an example. RE is mainly wind and solar power. You only get wind power when the wind blows, and there is no solar at night. It is totally untrue that RE is now the most cost-effective. In fact, RE is very expensive, much more so than coal or nuclear power.

Currently, the nuclear electricity produced by the Koeberg nuclear power station near Cape Town is about the cheapest in the country, much much cheaper than the wind and solar. The reality is that virtually all of South Africa’s big electricity is produced in the far north-east of the country, in the coal fields. We need to build more big power in the south, to add to the existing 2 000MW of Koeberg. Nuclear is the only answer.

Note that the largest user of wind power in Europe is Germany, but wind is still only a very small percentage of their national demand. It has failed. Germany has urgently returned to building coal-fired power stations.

South Africa’s nuclear scientists are not lying fools, they are patriotic professionals, trying to achieve the best answer in the national interest.

Dr Kelvin Kemm

Nuclear Physicist, Pretoria

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