Acting chief nuclear officer at the Koeberg Nuclear Power station, Keith Featherstone, on Thursday said the replacement of three steam generators at the plant’s Unit One is complete.
Featherstone was speaking during Premier Alan Winde’s 20th Digicon on Thursday.
Featherstone said they will be performing tests at different power levels which will allow them to consider the unit to be commercially viable and available to the grid.
“That date we have set and we believe from a confidence point of view, the unit will definitely be back by November 3. Unit Two is now set to start its outage on November 7. On November 7, we will start the replacement of the steam generators.
We estimated that we will need longer than what we originally planned based on the experience from Unit One and we'll be taking all the lessons that we've learnt from this to make sure we can do it as speedily as possible.
“That is the objective to us always at Koeberg, to make sure that we’ve got at least one unit online, preferably both. Our track record shows that when the units are online, they typically run reliably,” he said.
Featherstone said the staff at Koeberg were working day and night to try to bring the unit back as soon as possible even though it has taken longer than what was originally anticipated.
Koeberg was to have been decommissioned in July 2024, however, its lifespan is being extended to help alleviate rolling blackouts.
Winde had previously spoken out of his “grave concerns” with regard to delays in the refurbishments of the Koeberg plant.
Cape Times