The South African nuclear build stinks, and the fact that many say it’s the cheapest and cleanest is a contradiction in itself. Cape Messenger Editor Donwald Pressly reports back from parliament with news that Brian Molefe announced a surplus of electricity in five years. And despite this excess, Molefe is still in support of a nuclear programme that could cripple the local economy in the process. An interesting analysis. This article was first published on the Cape Messenger website. – Stuart Lowman
By Donwald Pressly*
Quite frankly, Eskom must think we are stupid. At a press conference at parliament last week, its chief executive Brian Molefe said at the pace that the build programme was progressing now at the state-owned electricity monopoly, in five years there should be a surplus of electricity. The Ingula, a pumped-hydro power plant, is coming on track little by little in the Little Drakensburg. It will by the end of the year produce about 1 400MW of power. When our massively expensive Medupi and Kusile, the coal-fired plants, ultimately come on stream there will be about another 10 000MW on tap.
Wow! In the middle of this sudden Eskom good news (there hasn’t been much), South Africa is still considering a potentially punitively expensive nuclear build programme. I asked Molefe if the projections of a surplus would lead to a rethink of nuclear. He responded that although government took that sort of decision, he was for it. It is “clean and cheap”, he said. So it still seems that we will go ahead with this absurd plan, come what may.
Jeremy Warner, a correspondent for The Telegraph just this week wrote about “a ruinous price” that will be paid for Britain’s “scandalous failure in energy policy”. His story largely relates to the folie de grandeur at Hinkley Point nuclear power station in Somerset. I love his turn of phrase. He called it “eye-wateringly expensive” and “wholly unnecessary”. It is a case study as to why South Africa should not follow the lunatic British route. The British, who despite their problems are much richer than we are, can’t afford even one nuclear power station.
Warner’s descriptions spring to mind when it comes to the proposed building of up to six mini nuclear power stations as is proposed in South Africa’s build programme. It is estimated to cost at least a trillion rand, but it is probably going to be three times that in the end. The former figure is just short of our national budget spend annually, the latter figure close to our GDP. So to think South Africa can afford six nuclear power stations is just insane.
Priceless suggestion
The suggestion that we will be able to sell more electricity – as a consequence of even more capacity brought on by the nuclear power stations – to other countries in Africa is priceless. This is at a time when Eskom wanted a double-digit electricity tariff hike, about three times the target inflation figure of 6% (which is the top of the inflation target band of 3 to 6%). It has been granted by Nersa a 9.4% hike, itself 3.4 percentage points above the inflation target. It also comes at a time when the Eskom CFO Anoj Singh said there was a cash kitty of between R30 billion and R40 billion for the Eskom build programme, although he quickly added this was “not a war chest” for the nuclear build programme. One hopes that Singh’s view prevails, but it does strike one as politically insensitive for Eskom to be demanding high tariff hikes at a time when it appears to be awash with funds. Or am I missing something?
Administered prices – those costs imposed on the South African citizens through fiscal measures like taxes, municipal rates, electricity and water bills, university fees – are mostly rocketing. Other costs, like food and transport – which hurt the poor the most – are orbiting. When the Brent Crude oil price starts rising again (it did so a little this week), we will soon find petrol pump prices rising inexorably. Transport costs in the year ahead could telescope – if I may use that word – at a time when Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan added an extra fuel tax in the latest budget. We can’t afford to place ever-increasing administrative price pressure on South Africans. To run the added risk of imposing the burden of government guarantees on the proposed nuclear programme is madness. #DownWithNukes, we say.
- Donwald Pressly, Editor of Cape Messenger.
