Today’s Questions for
South Africa
Nuclear Power Stations
One of the most pressing questions today is that of nuclear power
stations.
The destruction of the nuclear power plants in Japan raises
the question of how safe a nuclear installation can be? There can be little question that nuclear
power presents a variety of problems and questions that need to be answered
before a country commits itself to the construction of new nuclear power plants
or even the continued operation of existing nuclear power plants. In the context of South
Africa, the Cabinet decision in March 2011 to construct
six new nuclear installations, only days after the disaster in Japan, must be
questioned. Some of the questions that
need answers are addressed below.
Motivation
Nuclear power is one of the alternatives available for the provision of
power to an increasingly power-hungry population. Others include:
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coal,
which consumes large quantities of the Earth’s limited resources of fossil
fuels, resources that could well be used for more valuable and durable
purposes. Oil, coal, natural gas and
other similar resources are the primary feedstock for the production of a vast
range of plastics, without which our modern civilization would be unable to
function. Look around you. How many of the things that you use every day
are made without the use of plastics?
That’s right! Practically
none! Do you think it is right and good
to burn this valuable resource, and do away with your car, shoes, clothes,
cellphone and computer? These reserves
will be exhausted one day, and that day will be much sooner if we continue to
consume them at a profligate rate!
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Solar
energy, of which there are abundant and practically inexhaustible quantities
poured down on us every day. It is clean
and leaves no harmful residue, produces no Earth-destroying bye-products.
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Water
power generation, which, unfortunately in South Africa as in many other
developing countries, requires resources of water that are scarce, although
generally not entirely absent. This possibility
has the valuable possibility of supporting agricultural development as an
additional benefit of the construction of dams.
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Wind
power, with which South
Africa is richly endowed along long
stretches of its coastline and mountain ranges.
This, too, with the exception of a low level of noise generation which
affects the immediate vicinity, has no undesirable side effects and
bye-products, and is produced by an inexhaustible resource.
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Wave
energy, which remains relatively undeveloped at present, but which offers
enormous possibilities, and uses a natural source of renewable energy in
abundant supply along South
Africa’s long coastline with, apparently, no
negative effects and extremely limited environmental impact.
Given the wide range of options available, all of which have been
available for a long time, the questions to be asked are Why nuclear? Why now?
The answer to these might be found in the fact that the Cabinet decision
to go nuclear was made only after a visit to France by a high-powered delegation,
including a number of members of Parliament and Government of South Africa who
have amassed enormous wealth in circumstances that might be deemed questionable,
and would certainly benefit from a clear statement of source. French and German companies were accused some
years ago of securing lucrative munitions contracts by paying large bribes to
senior politicians and Government officials.
The investigations into these transactions by the German Police were
abandoned after the South African Police failed, over a number of years, to
provide information. The same South
African Police abandoned the investigation in 2010, alleging that it would take
too long to obtain the required information from the German Police! Are these same companies, or their associates,
involved in the provision of the nuclear power stations that the Cabinet now
proposes building? It should be recalled
that the decision to place the large munitions contracts with companies that
were previously not even short-listed was made after personal visits by the
officials concerned to the companies.
Given the questionable past and present associations of several of those
now involved, it would certainly be legitimate to ask the question if any party
to the nuclear power plant contracts has been paid anything, how much has now
been paid, and to whom?
Safety
Government and Escom claim that the Koeberg reactor is safe. Escom states that it does not have the
potential problems that the Japanese reactors, Chernobyl
and Three Mile Island had, that South
Africa is one of the most geologically safe
areas in the world. It does not suffer
earthquakes. Is that the truth? There was a major earthquake south of South
Africa, measured at 5,0 on the Richter scale, in January 2011, in Ceres, not
very far from Koeberg, a 6,3 earthquake occurred in June 1979, followed in
September 1979 by a 5,7 earthquake! That
does not seem to be very safe, does it? The Milnerton Fault runs in a south-easterly
direction from about 8km offshore of Koeberg, beneath the Milnerton, Cape Town, area and probably across the central Cape Flats
and the north-eastern part of False Bay!
It is well-recognised that the Japanese have some of the most efficient
managers and planners available. The
Western world has long viewed the Japanese model of management with envy. Yet the Japanese reactors have suffered
devastating damage, with a major nuclear disaster still looming. The proponents argue that the disaster is the
result of natural causes that cannot happen in South Africa. The Japanese knew that these causes were a
threat to their nuclear industry, yet, with all of their wealth, planning and
management efficiency, the disaster did happen!
The short version of the story is that the Japanese built the reactors
to be as safe as they could make them in an earthquake.
The disaster that destroyed the reactors was not an earthquake directly,
but a tsunami that resulted from an earthquake!
Nuclear reactors, because of their need for massive cooling capability,
have to be built next to large bodies of water, i.e. next to the sea, and that
is where tsunamis occur. It is quite
possible that a large shift in the Earth’s crust occurring in the middle of the
Atlantic or even in Patagonia, could unleash a
tsunami larger than the one that destroyed the Japanese reactors! How do you build a nuclear plant to withstand
a wall of water forty metres high, travelling at a thousand kilometres an
hour? The short answer – you can’t!
When a nuclear reactor fails catastrophically, as those in Japan, Chernobyl
and Three Mile Island did, it has the
potential to unleash a cloud of radioactive dust that enters the wind systems
of the world, and contaminates very large areas. The contamination is extremely long-lived. The Welsh farmers, on the opposite side of Britain from Russia,
are still unable to sell the meat produced by the sheep grazing on the
contaminated land, a quarter century after the Chernobyl melt-down! This is absolute evidence of the high level
of danger to the entire world posed by the nuclear power industry. And this danger is not confined to operating
nuclear power stations.
The nuclear industry has not yet found a way to deal safely with the
radioactive waste of the plants. This
waste continues to emit heat and to require cooling systems for many years
after it is put into storage. When the
cooling systems fail, as they have done in each of the nuclear failures, the
result is radioactive contamination. The
risk is not confined to nuclear power plants, but also to their waste dumps,
and the risk continues decades after the power station is switched off,
decommissioned and even demolished! A
glance at the evidence of the incapability of Escom to ensure its continued
capability to produce electricity, its prime responsibility and the reason for
its existence, must surely bring into question its capability to continue to
keep the nuclear waste safe decades after it has ceased to fulfil any economic
purpose!
Any nuclear power station, or any other enterprise, is manned by
people. Not only are these people prone
to making errors and failing to foresee problems, but they are there for the
money. We have seen how teachers go on
strike immediately before exams, how the Defence Force goes on strike, the
Police, the medical profession, and all the other so-called essential
workers. The nuclear workers, at any
level, are subject to the same drives and motivations. What is to stop them going on strike and
holding the entire country to ransom?
This threat is not confined to the employees of the nuclear
facility. It includes transport
companies delivering goods to the plant, maintenance workers, suppliers of
pumps, taxi drivers who transport the plant workers, road maintenance workers,
and so on. The list of people who could
use the vulnerability of the plant to any sort of failure for their own benefit
is practically endless. It is highly
probable that, some day, these workers will be motivated to use their work
stoppage ability to hold their employers to ransom. The result may well be a nuclear catastrophe!
Economic Benefit
One of the claims made for nuclear power is that it is relatively
cheap. No accurate study proving this
has been published by Escom or the Government, and one may be pardoned for
doubting the figures supplied for the construction cost and the operating
costs. Very few projects in the New
South Africa have been completed at the stated cost, or even at 150% of the
stated cost. Part of the reason for this
is that large projects are prime targets for corruption, which explains the
plethora of large, often unnecessary, projects promoted by Government. Another part of the reason for cost overruns
is that there is a severe lack of qualified and experienced persons with the
required skills in the country. A third
part of the reason is that contractors often have to carry a large,
unproductive BBEEE component, as well as having to comply with a multiplicity
of unproductive Government requirements and form-filling in order to get the
contracts in the first place, which pushes their cost base sky-high while, at
the same time, displacing those scarce skills that could do the job
effectively.
Part of the economic benefit to be derived from a large project is the
industrial activity required to produce the components that go into the
project. Unfortunately, in the case of South Africa, a
large part of the cost of these components, and so the industrial activity and
the jobs it brings, will go abroad. For
example, the tube manufacturing plant that produced the fuel rods for the Atomic
Energy Corporation was sold by the ANC government to China for a knockdown
price, of which only an amount sufficient to cover the commission of the
(ANC-related) selling agent was ever paid!
The atomic Energy Corporation was effectively disbanded, thereby
dispersing the extremely valuable expertise it had built up in the nuclear
field at huge cost to the country. Even
that expertise would have had to be put under a microscope before the Cabinet
could decide to proceed with the commitment to construct a whole series of
nuclear power plants. Without that
expertise, they would have had to rely on the expertise of the company
supplying the plant. Or, perhaps, on the
money of that company. It seems unlikely
that even the amount of work and products to be supplied locally during the
construction phase of these plants will justify the massive expenditure needed
for them.
One of the objections to the other forms of (renewable) power generation
is that they are expensive in terms of capital requirement. Perhaps, from a macro point of view, this is
not really valid. The job creation
caused by the local manufacture of the components under licence will likely be
substantial, and may lead to a new export industry. The people newly employed will move up on the
income scale, making job space available for those below them. At the end of this process, many of those
presently receiving welfare payments will be able to move into formal
employment. The saving of those welfare
payments and the taxes paid by the newly employed are never taken into the
calculation but are, without doubt, substantial. The counter-argument to this is that the
people to be employed will not be those receiving welfare. That is true, but their employment in
higher-level jobs will free up at least the same number of lower-level jobs,
and this effect will cascade down the ladder of job levels to the lowest. It will open opportunities for new entrants
to the job market, and will assist South African industry to enter new fields
of opportunity for exports to replace those exports lost to the ever-increasing
cost of South African labour. We must
not forget about the Multiplier Effect of new job creation. This is the effect created when a new job
permits the worker to buy a newspaper each day, a new outfit of clothes, send
his or her child to a better school, take a vacation at the coast, or to set up
a small business to supply materials, parts or services to the new activity,
thereby creating a chain of job creation that has been shown to amount to as
much as eight to twelve times the number of jobs directly created. Present Government efforts seem to be aimed
mainly at the ‘poorest of the poor’.
This sector of job creation tends to have the lowest Multiplier
Effect. It is much more effective in
economic terms, as well as in total job creation terms, to create a
high-technology job than one moving gravel on a road repair site.
Escom aims to increase the supply of power to South Africa by the construction of
nuclear power plants. There is a shortage
of electricity in South
Africa.
It may be possible to achieve the same effect as the generation of power
by a nuclear plant simply by subsidising, to the same capital cost, the
purchase of energy saving appliances, plant and equipment by the public. Many factory owners have found that the cost
of power to their plants is almost identical regardless of whether coal, gas,
oil or electricity is used. The small
difference in cost may be the factor that induces the choice of a higher
polluting source over a low polluting source.
The same logic may be applied to a subsidy in the cost of electricity
for the switch-over to more efficient methods of using the power, to make that
switch-over economically attractive to the factory owner. It is likely that such a program could easily
reduce the need for at least one of the proposed new power stations.
Alternative Power
Generation
Although the capital cost of an array of solar panels equivalent to the
capacity of a nuclear power station may be high, if that array is broken down
by the number of houses in the country, the cost will not be for the direct
account of Escom. In Germany and
elsewhere, there is a program under which private persons install their own
solar panels on their homes and factory buildings, and sell the excess power
they generate to the central supplier. A
study done in German has revealed that many householders have recovered the
capital cost of the installation from the sale of their excess power over a
period of as little as four to seven years, depending on their own usage. That is a good return on investment in any
terms, and it could be made better by making it tax-free! Subsidising the capital cost of this
installation, in return for a lower selling price of the electricity produced, together
with an agreement with financiers to fund the balance, could make it available
as a long-term investment to even poor communities. This could be the start of the
democratisation of electricity production!
The argument against the use of solar or wind power is that it produces
power only when the sun shines or the wind blows. However, that power can be stored in a
variety of ways. For example, the excess
power generated during the sunny or windy times can be used to pump water into
high-level storage dams, to generate power in a water-powered system in low-sun
or windless times, or it could be used to store heat in the form of molten
salt, to provide for steam generation at night.
There are many such systems already available and tested. They need only to be used.
What do we, the
public, need to know?
There are many questions still to be asked, but, possibly, the most
important are included in the following list.
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Why
do we need nuclear power?
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What
will the real cost be?
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What
are the alternative sources of power?
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What
is the cost of the alternative sources of power?
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Why
has a decision not been made to apply these alternatives?
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What
methods have been considered and adopted for the conservation of the existing
electricity supply?
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What
are the real time lines, and how will they be met?
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Who
is going to benefit from the contracts?
Are those in a position to decide on the provision of the nuclear power
stations willing to undertake to refund to the public coffers any profit they
may subsequently be found to have made from the process that they have not
publicly declared up front?
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What
are the real risks of the project, for the full life of the possible risk? How will these risks be countered? What assurances will be offered in this
regard?
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What
have we not been told?
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