This article below from AFP is so disturbing one hardly knows where to begin. Nuclear power stations are prohibitively expensive and affordable only by the richest nations. They are also potentially dangerous, as the well documented Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island disasters attest. Plus, mankind has yet to find a safe way of dealing with nuclear waste. With innovation making renewables cheaper, nuclear is also so 20th Century. Such is the public aversion that those who commit their nations to nuclear programmes are often accused of receiving inappropriate inducements – a justifiable conclusion given nuclear’s smelly reputation. In South Africa’s case, we come from a base of well founded suspicion about politicians with snouts deep in the public purse. Trust in an already opaque process hasn’t been helped by the spotty track record of the recently appointed Energy Minister. And with an abundance of coal, potentially game-changing shale gas deposits in the Karoo, plentiful and cheap natural gas in Mozambique and a successful and expandable renewables programme, you have to wonder what is motivating those even considering nuclear as an option. A generous interpretation is that SA’s Government may have fallen into what Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman Warren Buffett describes as “the institutional imperative”, a malaise that often afflicts large organisations. As he explained when writing to shareholders in 1989: “When I entered the business world, I thought then that decent, intelligent and experienced managers would automatically make rational business decisions. But I learned over time that isn’t so. Instead, rationality frequently wilts when the institutional imperative comes into play. Institutional dynamics, not venality or stupidity, set businesses on courses which are too often misguided.” Not just businesses, but pretty much any large organisation. Governments included.  – AH  Â
From Agence France-Presse
Russia’s atomic energy agency said Monday it will provide up to eight nuclear reactors to South Africa by 2023 in a $50 billion strategic partnership between the two countries.
The delivery of the reactors will enable the foundation of the first nuclear power plant based on Russian technology on the African continent, the Rosatom agency said in a statement.
Director general Sergey Kirienko estimated the value of the deal at between $40 to $50 billion, given that one reactor costs around $5 billion, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.
The inter-governmental agreement, signed in Vienna on the margins of the International Atomic Energy Agency conference, also calls for Russia to help build infrastructure in South Africa and train African specialists at Russian universities.
Rosatom will create thousands of jobs in South Africa as part of the deal which will be worth “at least 10 billion dollars” to local industry, Kirienko said in a statement.
South Africa’s Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said her country sees nuclear power as “an important driver for the national economic growth”.
“I am sure that co-operation with Russia will allow us to implement our ambitious plans for the creation by 2030 of 9.6 GW of new nuclear capacities based on modern and safe technologies,” she said in a statement.
South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised nation, currently has only one nuclear power plant. It is heavily dependent on coal for its energy supply and its electricity capacity is already near the maximum.
Pretoria had announced at the end of last year that it was going to have up to eight new nuclear reactors online between 2023 and 2035, along with other energy sources including shale gas and hydroelectric power from the future Inga III dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
South Africa’s nuclear power ambitions had  attracted several proposals.
French group Areva which built South Africa’s only nuclear plant at Koeberg had proposed to provide the country with its new generation of EPR reactors.
Pretoria had also solicited an offer from the US-Japanese group Westinghouse.
The new Russian reactors from Rosatom are expected to go online in 2023.
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