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South Africa’s energy crisis may worsen in the near future as Eskom engages in several disputes with French contractor Framatome regarding the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station.
Koeberg’s operating license expires next year, and the plant will not have its life extended by another 20 years if it fails to replace the three steam developers in each of the plant’s two units. However, work at the power station has faced several delays.
Unit 1 was taken online in December 2022 for what was supposed to be”180 days”. The unit was expected to come back online by June 2023, but after suffering several delays, the project’s completion date has been pushed back to November 1 2023.
This poses a critical problem, as Unit 2 will be decommissioned on November 7 for the same procedure.
According to City Press, the severe delays have been caused by multiple failures from Eskom and French firm Framatome.
The refurbishment project started in 2010 and 2012. However, over the course of the project, several significant missteps led to various parts of the process being delayed.
This included having to fly 320-ton generators to China to be fixed. These were subsequently deemed unsavable forcing a restart in production. The delay set back the refurbishment project by two years, the paper said, with the generators arriving back in South Africa in 2020 – not 2018 as planned.
Locally, Eskom also failed to do its part in constructing a building to house the old generators which emit radiation.
All along the multi-year journey, both Eskom and Framatome have been hit with penalties because of the delays.
“There are now over 100 active contractual disputes between Eskom and Framatome, with a single one of them with a value of approximately R1 billion,” former board member of the National Nuclear Regulator Peter Becker said.
More load shedding for Western Cape
Koeberg provides nearly 2,000 MW of power, equating to roughly two stages of load shedding. Having both Units offline could bring further damage to South Africa’s plan to stop load shedding.
Western Cape premier Alan Winde said that having both units offline could have a disastrous impact on the Western Cape’s load shedding schedules, warning that the Western Cape could have more load shedding compared to the rest of South Africa.
“Every day this process is delayed brings us closer to a catastrophic increase in the severity of blackouts, particularly for the Western Cape, which will be hugely detrimental to our residents and economy,” Winde said.
“We have accelerated our economic growth and job creation drive through our Growth for Jobs strategy, and we cannot afford to have both of Koeberg’s units offline simultaneously.”
“I must emphasise to the residents of the Western Cape that our concern is not a nuclear one, but rather an even further constraint on our energy supply. We must understand how Eskom is going to mitigate this possibility and plan to manage this dual outage at Koeberg.” he said.
Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has also expressed concerns that the planned maintenance may face even more delays in the near future.
Eskom’s new plan
To ensure that they maintain Koeberg’s operating license, Eskom has asked the National Nuclear Regulator to separate the licenses of the two units based on their completion date.
Unit 1 was finished in July 1984, with its lifespan set to expire in July 2024. As previously mentioned, work on unit 1 should be finished by November 2023.
Unit 2 was completed 17 months after Unit 1, with Eskom asking that both units get their own separate licenses.
This would give Unit 2 a slightly longer period to finish refurbishments, which would hopefully allow the site to still operate in the midst of South Africa’s energy crisis.
Read: New load shedding stages for South Africa – this is what happens if we hit stage 16
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