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Time to revisit SA’s long abandoned PBMR programme
News emerged yesterday that Germany plans to postpone closing its last three nuclear power plants. This is the first time the country has deviated from a politically-driven strategy initiated two decades back, and accelerated by former chancellor Angela Merkel after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in 2011.
Reason: Pragmatism, a concept too often abandoned on the altar of political expediency. Germany is facing a likely shortage of energy in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With the West siding against him, Russian president Vladimir Putin has weaponised gas supplies to Europe, threatening a total cut-off in the Northern winter.
Pretoria would do well to replicate Germany’s newfound common sense approach to energy procurement. Despite justifiable bitterness around Zuma’s proposed Rosatom deal that would have bankrupted SA, it makes no sense for an energy-started nation to abandon nuclear in its entirety. Indeed, SA would do well to dust off a local innovation senselessly abandoned by the ANC for ideological reasons.
It’s almost eight years since my interview with the CEO of Nuclear Africa Kelvin Kemm, who was then lobbying for the country to resuscitate its much admired Pebble Bed Modular Reactor nuclear programme. It’s never too late to admit your mistakes. Especially after recognising that something in front of your nose could have prevented so much suffering.
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