LETTER: Nuclear power has no place in SA
Solar photovoltaic and wind costs have dropped while coal and nuclear costs have increased
Your columnist Des Muller is totally out of touch with the reality of a world that is phasing out nuclear energy “What Zuma Meant About Nuclear” (April 26). While undoubtedly there was a need for long-term energy planning, had the 2007-2008 SA nuclear programme gone ahead we would have been saddled today with an additional anachronistic structure. The substantial capital costs and regulatory hurdles associated with contemporary reactor designs and the three nuclear accidents have influenced the discontinuation of nuclear power: the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 2011 Fukushima disaster exacerbated concerns about plant safety. Practically all of the developed countries of the Western world are either opposed to nuclear power or are in the process of phasing it out. Germany, for example, has permanently shut down eight of its 17 reactors and pledged to close the rest by the end of 2022. There is a long list of the countries that stopped the constr...
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