Transparency, a concept not akin to all things nuclear in South Africa. Opposition parties have queried the financing behind the $100 billion nuclear program and there are major concerns around the veil of secrecy the project has hanging around it. And from outside government, it looks like someone’s trying to push a square peg into a round hole. Renewable projects have offered up alternatives but government’s still hell bent on pushing nuclear. It would be ironic that nuclear’s the solution that cripples the South African economy. The South African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute will protest outside Parliament tomorrow in a bid to get some answers, one year after the Department of Energy signed the nuclear deal, this will be the third time of asking. – Stuart Lowman
Issued by SAFCEI
Faith communities, supported by the Right2Know (R2K) Campaign and others will gather outside Parliament at 8am on Wednesday 23rd September, to demonstrate against the government’s continued secrecy around the nuke deals.
On the 1st September, Minister Joemat-Pettersson, Minister of Energy, told members of Parliament that she was committed to a transparent process around the nuclear deals.
That same day, SAFCEI received a letter from Treasury referring our request for the financial options model and economic impacts of localisation studies to the Department of Energy, and on the 11th September, SAFCEI received a letter from the DDG for Nuclear Energy, Mr Mbambo, refusing to release details of the financial options model and economic impacts of localisation studies to the public.
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SAFCEI has instructed its lawyers in this matter, Open Democracy Advice Centre (ODAC), to launch an appeal against DoE’s refusal to provide information on the costs of this massive scale 9600MW nuclear deal.
If we commit to a package deal with Russia or any other vendor, without knowing the details of what we are paying for, we will be buying a huge environmental risk, which could cripple the economy, undermine social support for the poor and vulnerable, and expose our ecosystem resources on which we depend, to irreparable environmental harm.
The history of nuclear build projects is that they generally involve significant cost overruns and are delayed. This means that Treasury would have to find the extra money to meet the contracted payments, which could come from pensions, social grants and money allocated for housing or education.
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This is the second refusal SAFCEI has received on this topic. Earlier this year, SAFCEI had asked for the details of the intergovernmental agreements and for copies of “any affordability or feasibility study conducted by the Dept. of Energy with regard to the procurement of nuclear power”, had been refused, and had appealed that refusal. In a letter dated 13 July 2015, the Minister claimed that such information was commercially sensitive and would not be released, and also stated that the right to secrecy trumped any public interest.
“In other words, it seems that the Minister of Energy and her Departmental officials have decided that they are going to buy costly nuclear reactors, in secret no matter what the cost, and tell us after the fact, if they tell us at all”, said SAFCEI spokesperson, Liz McDaid.
Minister Joemat-Pettersson signed the Russian nuclear deal one year ago on the 22nd September 2014, a scant two days after she received the President’s approval to do so.
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In December 2014, Treasury admitted that they had not had access to the financial implications of such a deal, nor had they any report or independent analysis of their own.  On the 1st September 2015, Treasury responded to a further request from SAFCEI for the financial modelling and economic benefits studies on the nuclear deal, claiming that they did not have them and referring the request to the Department of Energy.
“The attitude of automatic secrecy adopted by the government is unacceptable. There is an arrogant assumption that South Africans have no right to such critical information about nuclear projects that impact on our future until it is too late. This raises grave concerns about the government’s commitment to constitutional rights, transparency and public participation” stated Sean Brown, SAFCEI’s Acting Director.
