By Wendell Roelf
CAPE TOWN, April 2 (Reuters) – South Africa is mulling the
re-establishment of its uranium enrichment and conversion
facilities, which were dismantled during the apartheid era, as
it seeks to secure fuel for a new fleet of nuclear power
stations.
Africa’s largest economy, which announced more than 40 years
ago that it would enrich uranium as part of a military-linked
strategy during the Cold War, wants another 9,600 megawatts of
nuclear energy to help shore up a power grid under pressure from
rising demand and decades of under investment.
“The studies confirmed that fuel for the power reactor fleet
should be manufactured in South Africa for reasons of security
of supply when the nuclear component is expected to be around 13
percent of installed capacity,” Chantal Janneker, Necsa’s group
spokeswoman, told Reuters.
Necsa, the country’s nuclear energy corporation, is being
encouraged to revive its participation in the nuclear value
chain – including enrichment, conversion and nuclear fuel
manufacturing – to reduce South Africa’s current dependence on
imported reactor fuels.
The country 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.
“Earlier feasibility studies have shown that the fuel
requirements of a nuclear reactor fleet of about 10,000
megawatts makes uranium enrichment a viable undertaking,”
Janneker said.
Necsa will investigate developing its own enrichment
technology or partner with an international company.
However, power utility Eskom, which oversees the continent’s
only nuclear power station Koeberg near Cape Town, said the plan
was for the enrichment facilities to develop together, and not
ahead, of the expansion programme so that fuel production plants
can be economically sustainable.
Continued…
