As a way of boosting South Africa’s energy security and also ending the procurement process by 2024, the country is set to go ahead with plans for a new 2,500-megawatt nuclear power plant.
Last month, South Africa’s energy regulator backed a long-term government plan to build new nuclear power units, a move that could help to shift the country away from coal and into less carbon-intensive means of generating electricity.
The deputy energy minister, Nobhule Pamela in a speech to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said, “We plan to issue the Request for Proposal (RFP) for 2 500MW nuclear programme at end of March 2022 and complete the procurement in 2024 to support the economic reconstruction and recovery plan and ensure security of energy supply”.
With the government having only launched a request for information in June last year to test the market’s appetite for the new plant, and the procurement process still in the early stages, there were no immediate details on estimated cost or completion date for the project.
Africa’s most industrialised economy has the continent’s only operating nuclear plant, a 1 900 megawatt (MW) facility outside Cape Town that was built under apartheid.
However, much of its electricity supply comes from a fleet of coal-fired power plants that spew harmful emissions into the air and many of which are set for closure within a decade as South Africa cuts down emissions.
South Africa, which experiences regular blackouts due to erratic power supplies, has said it will look to expand its nuclear capacity at a pace and time it could afford, after abandoning in 2018 a massive nuclear expansion plan championed by former president, Jacob Zuma.
Omotayo Araoye
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