SA has an immediate crisis in supplying reliable electricity. The government’s curiously oblique solution: eight new nuclear reactors, costing about R1-trillion. The inherent complexity of procurement, financing and construction means no new nuclear power could flow for at least a decade, and then only at prices well above those many customers cannot afford today.The country’s past two flirtations with modern nuclear power have not gone well. Plans for a home-grown "pebble bed" modular reactor were abandoned in 2010 after 12 years and R7bn was wasted. Now rarely mentioned, it found no customers or investors, but its advocates’ influence lives on. In 2008, the government rejected as "unaffordable" bids to build 3.2GW of conventional nuclear reactors.Today, its ambition is three times bigger — 9.6GW — and each gigawatt will cost about three times more because real costs rose while the rand lost half its value. So, the total price tag has increased about nine-fold since 2008, while SA’...
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