Enough of the blundering towards Chernobyl
We’ve had enough bizarre, inexplicable, infuriating, damaging choices being made on our behalf over the past decade. It is enough
If SA were the Titanic, new nuclear investments would be the iceberg that could have sunk us had we stayed the course. Despite a questionable resurgence in the media recently of nuclear nostalgia, it is widely recognised now that we narrowly avoided a potential economic and environmental disaster, mainly because rational decisionmaking seems to be once again de rigueur in SA. Rational decisionmaking means uneconomic, unaffordable, unjust electricity choices simply cannot be made.
Neither the 2008 plans for new nuclear power stations nor the 2015 plans for new nuclear power stations bore fruit, with one main reason: they were simply unaffordable. Even if the plans for nuclear had gone ahead (and here we really are navel-gazing), nuclear power stations are notorious for delivering well behind schedule, and well over budget. This means it usually takes nearly 15 years to build new nuclear power stations, usually at an exorbitant cost. If the 2015 plans had gone ahead, we still wo...
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