The government plans to revive its mothballed pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) programme as part of its new energy blueprint, which aims to derive more than half of SA’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2039.
The R2.23-trillion Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2025, approved by cabinet last week, heralds a “structural disruption” that will see the majority of SA’s electricity generated by nuclear and renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2039, minister of electricity & energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said on Sunday.
A total 58% of SA’s electricity is generated by its ageing fleet of coal-fired power plants and 4.5% comes from diesel.
The new plan is a marked departure from IRP 2023, which controversially scaled back on electricity generation from wind and solar.
The IRP 2025, which has yet to be published, sets out a new roadmap for meeting SA’s forecast electricity demand while meeting the government’s commitments to reduce carbon emissions and ensure a stable and reliable electricity supply to fuel the economy, said Ramokgopa.
It seeks to ensure energy security by installing more than 105,000MW of new generation capacity by 2039, of which 5,200MW (5%) will be nuclear, taking SA’s total nuclear output to 7,000MW.
“Of course there are doubters of our ability to prosecute a nuclear programme … but we have a history of nuclear programmes and are the only country on the continent that has two active reactors,” said Ramokgopa, referring to the Koeberg nuclear power station in the Western Cape.
State-owned electricity utility Eskom is planning a new nuclear plant at Duynefontein, and another is being considered at Thyspunt in the Eastern Cape.
SA launched its PMBR programme in the early 1990s but terminated it in 2010 after investors pulled out.
Briefing the media on the IRP 2025 on Sunday, Ramokgopa conceded the push for more nuclear power would face challenges as the shuttering of the PBMR had triggered an exodus of skilled staff.
The IRP 2025 will be published in the Government Gazette by Friday, according to officials.
Further details of which nuclear power technologies SA will invest in and how they are to be financed will be set out in a new nuclear industrialisation plan, said Ramokgopa.
There is growing global momentum in support of nuclear energy, and more than a dozen of the leading financial institutions — including the World Bank — have indicated their willingness to fund nuclear programmes, he said.
However, EE Business Intelligence managing director Chris Yelland expressed scepticism about the government’s plans to increase nuclear power generation, saying it was a high-risk venture that was unlikely to appeal to private sector investors unless the government provided guarantees, which Ramokgopa had indicated the state was unwilling to do.
SA was 15 years behind countries that had developed PBMR technology, which was not yet commercially available, while the construction of large pressurised water reactors was expensive, complex and slow, he said.
“It’s hopelessly ambitious,” he said.
The plan also envisages adding 25,000MW of solar power to the grid, with an extra 34,000MW from wind turbines, an additional 16,000MW from gas storage, and an extra 8,500MW from battery storage.
Further plans setting out how the government intends to expand the electricity transmission and distribution network will be published next year.
The plan assumes partial implementation of SA’s electricity generation recovery plan by 2029, with an energy availability factor of 66% in 2025 that rises to 68% in 2030. SA’s energy availability factor fell below 50% at the height of load-shedding in 2023.
Ramokgopa said the government remained committed to using coal as an energy source but would explore clean technologies to reduce carbon emissions. Eskom had been instructed to build a demonstration plant using clean coal technology by 2030, he said.
