Why South Africa should be excited about nuclear power (Kelvin Kemm)

Link: http://www.fin24.com/Economy/why-sa-should-be-excited-about-nuclear20151126

Why SA should be excited about nuclear Nov 26 2015 21:10 * Dr Kelvin Kemm

The Koeberg nuclear power station just outside Cape Town. (File, AFP)

Pretoria - A piece of uranium the size of an egg contains enough nuclear energy to supply the electricity needs for the entire lifetime of one person. This is millions of times more energy than is contained in a similar size lump of coal, or in a cupful of petrol.

This means that one can build a nuclear power station anywhere you like, and transport the fuel to the power station with no problem. In fact, if you want to, you can stockpile half a dozen years of fuel on site. In contrast, a coal-fired power station needs to be fed a continuous stream of coal 24 hours a day. As a result, one has to build coal-fired power stations as close to the coal mines as possible to minimise fuel transport costs.

That is why all of South Africa’s large coal-fired power stations are in the far north east of the country, in Mpumalanga and in northern KwaZulu-Natal. Think about that. Note that South Africa is about the same size as the whole of Europe. Imagine if all the

electricity of Western Europe was supplied only from Austria. Imagine supplying electricity to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, all from Austria. People would rapidly say that that was crazy.

It would be a very risky thing to do, besides the cost involved of moving the electricity over such large distance. But that is exactly what South Africa does. The distance from Pretoria to Cape Town is the same as the distance from Rome to London.

The only nuclear power station in Africa is Koeberg, which is situated not far from Cape Town, on the Atlantic coast. Koeberg supplies about half of the electricity of the Western Cape, the other half comes from the coalfields, beyond Pretoria. This is not good strategy. We need to produce much more large-scale base-load electricity from the south upwards, so to speak.

From a fuel point of view, you can put a large nuclear power station anywhere you like, but there is another consideration. Large nuclear power plant needs a large volume of water to cool the steam after it has passed through the turbines.

As a result, you have to build big nuclear power next to water, in our case the ocean. So that is why the currently identified nuclear power plant sites are at places near Jeffreys Bay, Cape Agulhas, Koeberg, and also on the Northern Cape coast. Some sites high up on the KZN coast have been ‘pencilled in’ for future consideration.

Before a nuclear site is cleared for use, years of scientific examination are carried out on the site. The underlying geology is examined. The meteorological patterns and historical records are meticulously investigated. All fauna and flora are examined, recorded and logged. The ocean patterns are examined, as well as all sea life.

As of now, the environmental investigations on the three potential sites have been in progress for half a dozen years, and environmental consultants have presented their findings to Eskom. The recommendation is that the first site to be used should be one called Thyspunt, which is not far from Jeffreys Bay. A power station there would feed electricity to Port Elizabeth, East London, plus a large part of the surrounding area. Strategically speaking, this is exactly what we need.

Nuclear energy costs won't make electricity more expensive We constantly hear of the huge cost involved. This projection is wrong. Right now, Eskom’s cash cow is Koeberg nuclear power station. It produces electricity which is cheaper than that produced by the large coal-fired plants, and considerably cheaper than wind or solar generated electricity.

Detailed financial analysis carried out by nuclear specialists at North West University has shown that new nuclear power, produced in South Africa, will be cheaper than coalfired electricity. That, of course, was an original design criterion. No scientist or

engineer would ever have started designing a nuclear power plant without having the final selling price of the electricity defined as an integrated element of what one calls the design envelope.

Nobody would start designing a new Boeing or Airbus without having the price of a ticket for a seat already defined. You have to build to the price competitive, otherwise don’t even start. Aeroplane designers do that, but so do nuclear reactor designers.

So, claims that South Africa’s new nuclear power plants will be so expensive that they will push up the cost of electricity are just not true. Right now, the cheap electricity coming from Koeberg is subsidising the high prices of wind and solar power.

To gain the advantage of economy of scale, South Africa has been designing a nuclear power fleet. So when one hears of costs for the nuclear power programme we are talking of an amount of money which is the budget over about 10 years to build three entire nuclear power stations; each of which will contain two or three reactors, totalling some six to nine nuclear reactors.

The current total budget is calculated to be of the order of R500bn to R650bn. The last two ministers of energy have stated that the R1trn that one so often reads is not an official estimate. In fact, numbers as high as R1.3trn have been quoted because some silly people have converted a trillion into US dollars, at $100bn, then as the exchange rate changes converted that back to rand, and came out at R1.3trn. That is foolish in the extreme.

A nuclear power plant has a higher initial capital construction cost than a coal-fired plant, but the fuel is much cheaper and much more predictable in price. If, in years to come, the uranium price were to double, it makes virtually no difference because the fuel volume is so low.

If Koeberg were a coal-fired plant, it would use six train loads of coal per day, but in fact it uses only one truck load of nuclear fuel per year.

So, over a lifetime, the nuclear generated electricity comes out cheaper. That is what industry wants to know. It certainly builds confidence in the future of an economy.

The simplest way to go about building a new nuclear power plant would be to just appoint a foreign company to build it and to give them all the money.

Jobs for South Africans Then South African citizens, who have no jobs, could sit in the gutter, chewing a piece of grass and watch French, Chinese, Russian welders welding pipes, while the South Africans draw tax payer-funded welfare cheques and continue to chew the grass. Far better, for the social wellbeing and financial stability of our own country, would be for

the South African to get out of the gutter, be trained as a welder and weld the pipes for a salary and stop drawing the welfare cheque.

As part of a strategy of national development, the government has decided that there must be a large percentage of local content in the nuclear power programme. That is a totally correct approach. The target mentioned is 50%. That means that half of the R600bn must stay in South Africa, and move through local companies. Excellent, so how do we do it? Well, for starters, we have to appoint a really good project management team to be the overall organisers, so to speak. We then have to find companies of all shapes and sizes, which can build and fabricate all the bits and pieces needed.

We did it with Koeberg, so now we have to do it again, on new reactors, which are bigger and more modern.

It will be South Africans who dig the foundations and pour the concrete. It will be South Africans who build the walls, lay the water pipes, install the electrical systems, and much more. We do this all the time on many other plants, so why not on a nuclear power station?

It is some strange flight of fantasy that causes people in their armchairs to talk as if the entire fictitious trillion rand is somehow going out of the country to pay foreigners to pour concrete.

As we move up the complexity chain, it will be South African engineers who execute the construction of the pumping systems and electrical control plant. It will be South Africans who bolt it all together and solder the wires.

Yes, we will be building to a foreign plan, just like we do when Mercedes cars are built in East London, and BMW cars are built in Pretoria.

Yes, the representatives of foreign companies will come here to work with our scientists and engineers, as the more complex elements are put together. Some items like the casting of large metal pressure vessels will not be done in South Africa, not because we don’t have the intellect to understand it but because we have not developed the facilities large enough to do it. So they will be imported. They will need to be transported by road on giant road freight vehicles.

However, many smaller high precision parts are needed, such as pumps and valves and very many more. South African companies already do things like this, so they need to step forward and make it known that they want to get into the nuclear build.

Very recently, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene announced an initial amount of R200m, which he made available to start getting organised for the new nuclear build. Other ministers and funding authorities already have more money. This is for various folks to

get themselves geared up to go for it. There are nuclear fabrication standards to be achieved. Inspection systems to be introduced, such as the x-raying of welds to make sure that each one is sound, these systems need to be put in place now.

In fact we go further. We want to export South African nuclear fabricated parts to the world. The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) has already started.

The existing market right now is 500 reactors worldwide. So companies don’t have to wait for our reactors needing a pump before one could be made and exported.

South Africa has a very competent body of nuclear professionals, as good as one will find anywhere in the world. We can become world players in the nuclear fabrication market, earning foreign exchange for the country, and providing future jobs and pride for our own people. This is exciting. The nuclear programme is something to be welcomed and viewed with pride, not with fear and lack of self-confidence.

Nuclear power expansion is our future destiny. Go for it with traditional South African grit, self-confidence and intelligent application. Why are so many people shivering with fear and hiding in dark corners when they see the word ‘nuclear’?

As a nuclear scientist, I know that we can build these reactors, together with foreign partners. We can export assemblies all around the world, just like we do with top-of-therange cars.

So let’s go for it with excitement.

Dream of the new horizons. * Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and is CEO of Nuclear Africa, a Pretoriabased nuclear project management company. Born in Durban, he studied at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, before moving to Pretoria.