I was having a hard time getting past finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s warning to Eskom this week that if the National Treasury was going to take over much of Eskom’s R400bn debt then he was going to require Eskom’s agreement to make big investments in “old and reliable” power technology, namely gas and nuclear.
Under instant pressure, he has now retreated from this grim threat and claims he merely meant that the energy transition to zero carbon emissions wouldn’t happen overnight in South Africa and that, somehow, a phasing out of fossil fuels might only be possible if we use other fossil fuels. It says so in the “official” integrated resource plan (IRP) presented by energy minister Gwede Mantashe in 2019, which includes gas and nuclear and, ludicrously, 1,500MW of new coal by 2027..
But that IRP is already obsolete as renewable technologies leave old men’s foolish dreams of big baseload plants in the dust. There is certainly no case for more gas other than, perhaps, to feed the standby generators we now run constantly on diesel and which, in a functioning system, would hardly ever be used.
Arguments for more gas have already been dispatched. It is a fossil fuel and the notion that it can be a useful in the transition to green energy is an illusion. Any gas assets built now would be quickly stranded and the idea that a switch to green hydrogen could use the same infrastructure has been demolished. New gas is a fool’s errand in South Africa which may explain why the ANC is so attracted to it.
But, greenie though I am, there might be a future for some new nuclear here. Nothing big, and the IRP merely makes provision for the lengthening of the life of Koeberg outside of Cape Town.
In major economies around the world, however, a new drive is on to produce small modular reactors. An SMR is typically about 80MW, built in a factory, put on a truck and delivered to site. If you want 320MW, buy or rent four modules. Bill Gates’s TerraPower is building one along with GE and Hitachi. NuScale in the US has had its SMR tech approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In the UK, Rolls Royce has been given more than £230m seed funding by the state to build its own SMR. In China, the Linglong 1 SMR destined for Hainan island has been approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
South Africa can’t afford another Koeberg and the days of large plants like it are numbered. Even in France, which lives off nuclear, there is great concern about the state of its fleet as it slowly corrodes
A small, mobile nuclear reactor sounds new but it isn’t. Dozens of nuclear-powered submarines are testament to the fact that they work even when you knock them about a little. About 80 SMRs are in development around the world but South Africans will be particularly interested in a sod-turning in Tennessee last month. X-Energy plans to begin construction of a $300m factory there to produce “pebbles” of coated uranium encased in a ceramic and graphite ball.
The names of many of the scientists behind the X-Energy SMR are Afrikaans. They used to work on Eskom’s Pebble Bed Modular Nuclear Reactor (PBMR), shut down by the Zuma administration. He wanted three monster nuclear plants from Vladimir Putin. Now the old PBMR hands are perfecting it in the US. One big investor in X-Energy is Andre Pienaar, a home-grown venture capitalist now based in Washington.
He reckons X-Energy’s SMR could be used anywhere. It would be mobile, fitted into a large container. Hell, one module could power Transkei once hooked onto Eskom’s grid. Hospitals and schools could run off micro modules. X-Energy has developed a space business and has a contract with Nasa to use the last docking station on the current (and old) International Space Station. When they launch their first module it’ll be the start of a new space station and Pienaar is going to power it with a pebble bed reactor. Look up one night and you’ll be able to see it.
South Africa can’t afford another Koeberg and the days of large plants like it are numbered. Even in France, which lives off nuclear, there is great concern about the state of its fleet as it slowly corrodes. But the SMR may become a viable tool and its mobility might be a real asset as we reconfigure our grid toward renewables. It is clean and it is undeniably green. Plant life is 60 years. Sadly for Godongwana and Mantashe and the ANC, there’s not much to eat here.
There’s no point being too doctrinaire about energy. We want zero carbon emissions and we hope to hell we can cool the planet back a little. So, whatever works. Renewable energy is going to carry the burden but unless these SMRs turn out to be just way too expensive, I have Pienaar’s number.
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