South Africa nowhere near new nuclear capacity

South Africa’s Ministry of Electricity and Energy withdrew a determination to procure new nuclear energy capacity after a court challenged the decision.

This is according to South Africa’s Minister of Electricity and Energy, Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who answered a parliamentary Q&A regarding a delay in the country’s procurement of nuclear power stations.

Ramokgopa said that a Minister, referring to former minister of mineral resources and energy Gwede Mantahse, had initiated the process of procuring new nuclear capacity for South Africa under the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP).

Mantashe, who was in charge of South Africa’s energy portfolio before the electricity component was assigned to Ramokgopa, had signed a determination to procure 2,500 megawatts of nuclear energy generation in March 2020.

This was done under Section 34 of the Electricity Regulation Act, which allows the minister, in consultation with the regulator, to procure new capacity when they determine the continued uninterrupted supply of electricity to be threatened.

However, the determination was only published in the Government Gazette in January 2024, just under a year after Ramokgopa was appointed minister of the electricity portfolio.

The Democratic Alliance took issue with the determination and challenged it in court, saying that by the time the determination was made, the power to do so rested with Ramokgopa and not Mantashe.

“It is our opinion that the determination published – signed on 10 March 2020, by the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Gwede Mantashe – is invalid because the wrong Minister, namely Mantashe, made it,” the DA’s shadow minister for mineral resources and energy, Kevin Mileham said at the time.

“We contend that the determination was procedurally unfair and failed to permit public comment on the submissions on which it was based.”

In his response, Ramokgopa said that the ministry decided to withdraw the Section 34 determination “rather than risk the entire process being delayed and sterilised through a lengthy court proceeding.”

However, the minister says that the National Economic Development and Labour Council is processing the 2023 IRP, which Cabinet should adopt by the middle of the year.

Ramokgopa says this will address the role, scale, and pace of additional nuclear capacity in the country’s energy mix.

The government’s draft IRP 2023 acknowledges the critical role that nuclear can play, although it does not include any new nuclear capacity in the country’s energy mix by 2030.

South Africa currently only has one nuclear power station, namely Koeberg Power Station, in the Western Cape, which has a total capacity of 1,860MW.

Nuclear unlikely in the near future

Despite Ramokgopa highlighting South Africa’s impetus to acquire new nuclear capacity, energy expert Chris Yelland said this is unlikely to be realised in the near future.

“There’s a lot of talk about technologies such as small modular reactors, but the reality is that right now they are not commercially available and not licensed,” he said.

“We don’t know the prices of these technologies, so there’s still some way to go, maybe a decade or 15 years before these become an option for South Africa.”

Yelland argues that given the infeasibility of technologies such as nuclear and gas, wind and solar power generation are the most efficient ways of addressing South Africa’s capacity shortage.

This was in response to a statement from Ramokgopa, who said South Africa was focused on adding to the energy mix rather than subtracting from it.

“The only game in town right now is wind, solar PV, and battery energy storage because that’s what’s financeable and can be delivered quickly,” Yelland said.

“The Minister was clear that the significant majority of the new generation capacity is going to be from renewable energy, but that does not mean that the end of coal is about to happen,” Yelland added.

A recent report by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) found that the cost of procuring independently produced renewable capacity has decreased dramatically since the first bid window.

Solar energy decreased from R2.75 per kWh during the first bid window to R0.50 during the sixth, whereas wind decreased from just over R1 to R0.50 per kWh.