Cape Town - South Africa could become a regional hub of nuclear expertise and training, as several African countries such as Ghana and Kenya have indicated that they are pursuing nuclear power.
This emerged at the African Energy Indaba which ends at the CTICC today, where speakers explored Africa’s rapidly growing need for energy access and offered learning opportunities to the African market and prospective business prospects in the energy space.
Speaking about the Lesedi Skills Development Academy in Atlantis, business development executive Shane Pereira said: “Lesedi is one of South Africa’s best kept secrets.
“We are perfectly positioned to provide our expertise and knowledge in providing solutions for South Africa’s energy crisis and offer solutions for emissions control in existing coal power plants and for the mining industry.”
Lesedi is an engineering, procurement and construction company that has been involved with maintenance and services at the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station from its inception.
“We’ve been exporting key maintenance skills abroad since 2006 and we’ve done over 75 interventions at numerous nuclear plants globally, with South African resources.
“Mostly in the US where we have sent our people to over 50 nuclear sites to assist during their outages, valves and pump maintenance, refuelling etc.
“We’ve got a core group of resources that we use at Koeberg but since we can only use them during outages and the plant coming online every 18 months or so for refuelling, it means we can deploy those resources internationally,” said Pereira.