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Experts eye Rosatom, Westinghouse reactors for South Africa nuclear power
By Wendell Roelf
19/06/2015
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa is considering using reactors from Russia's Rosatom and Westinghouse for its 9,600 megawatt nuclear fleet expansion, an energy advisor to government said on Friday.
Africa’s most developed economy aims to build six new nuclear power plants by 2030 at an estimated cost of between 400 billion rand to 1 trillion rand ($33 billion to $82 billion).
Kelvin Kemm, a member of a government panel advising the energy minister on the nuclear procurement, recommended Rosatam's VVER and Westinghouse's AP1000 reactors. Westinghouse is owned by Japan's Toshiba.
"Our collective opinion, as nuclear specialists in the country, is that those two reactors are very good for South Africa and we are advising government to look at them," Kemm, CEO at Nuclear Africa, told Reuters in Cape Town.
Rosatom's VVER and Westinghouse's models are pressurized water reactors similar to Koeberg, Africa's only nuclear plant, which generates 1,800 MW using an Areva reactor.
"Whether we use our cooling systems for the steam, there are a number of things South Africans are perfectly capable of adding to that basic structure. So we won't buy that thing absolutely as is off the shelf," Kemm said.
The government also plans to re-establish its uranium enrichment and conversion facilities, which were dismantled during the apartheid era when South Africa developed and later destroyed its nuclear bomb capability.
South Africa has some of the world's largest uranium deposits and the new nuclear fleet is likely to use 465 metric tonnes of enriched uranium a year by 2030, officials have said.
Construction is likely to begin next year on the first nuclear plant at Thyspunt near Jeffrey's Bay on the east coast, with the initial power generation from the new nuclear fleet generated in 2023, government officials have said.
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