Tag Archives: nuclear energy

Response from Eskom to our appeal against the Environmental Authorisation for Koeberg Nuclear site

Posted on by Koeberg Alert

Title page of response from Eskom to the KAA appeal

Back in 2007, Eskom began an Environmentam fcl Impact Assessment (EIA) for building a large new nuclear power plant on the Koeberg site, about 28km north of Cape Town. Ten years later, after many drafts and submissions, the Department of Environmental Affairs issued an Environmental Authorisation for the project to go ahead. Many organisations appealed this decision, and Eskom was required to respond in detail to the content of each of those appeals, which they have now done (in August 2018).

Many of these responses were combined into one document, which has been widely distributed. However, KAA received the following 115 page specific response. There has not been time to go through it in detail yet, but it is published below to give you all the opportunity to have a look through it and pass it on to others.

Paging through it, a few bits stood out for me.

A tourism plus…
In a show of optimism regarding possible impacts of tourism, Eskom writes “Some nuclear power stations have a positive effect on tourism, as tourists visit specifically to see the stations.”

Continue reading →

Nuclear reactors for Thyspunt have been ordered

Posted on by Koeberg Alert

This is according to the World Nuclear Association, which describes itself as “the only international industry organisation with a global mandate to communicate about nuclear energy”, and has members which include Rosatom, the Russian nuclear power company, as well as Areva of France, KEPCO of Korea, and many others.Ordered reactors from Russia close up Continue reading →

Patrick Moore: Another discredited pro-nuke lobbyist

Posted on by Koeberg Alert

The nuclear industry is losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the public, and has been suffering from sharply declining sales since even before Fukushima.  One response has been to hire high profile lobbyists to paint nuclear power as ‘perfectly safe’.  Unfortunately, sometimes journalists who are not too good at fact or background checking, such as our own Matthew le Cordeur, regurgitate the point of view put forward by these lobbyists, and write ‘articles’ such as this one (which I dealt with in detail in this post).PatrickMoore

One well known figure who has come out in support of nuclear power is Patrick Moore, who famously misrepresents himself as a ‘founder’ of Greenpeace.  Here is a short clip in which he sings the praises of a client (a company which runs a nuclear plant in the USA).  He says that “nuclear industry is actually one of the very safest industries”. Continue reading →

Government neglects nuclear waste

Posted on by Koeberg Alert

The Koeberg nuclear plant near Cape Town requires about thirty tons of uranium fuel per year.  Unlike a fuel such as coal, this uranium is not burnt up.  It undergoes a nuclear reaction, which transforms it into other elements, some of which are highly radioactive. Burning or any other chemical process does not reduce the radioactivity.

That means that over thirty tons of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) are removed from the reactors each year.  So far over a million kilograms of this SNF (over 2000 fuel elements)  have accumulated since Koeberg began operating in 1984.

Continue reading →

Nuclear-1 Submission to Dept of Environmental Affairs

Posted on by Koeberg Alert

Before approval for a nuclear plant can be granted, by law an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has to be done and submitted to the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA).

The EIA for the so called ‘Nuclear-1’ project has been in progress for over six years, and the fourth and final draft of the resulting report was eventually submitted to the DEA in early 2016.

This report is of a low scientific standard, and should be rejected by the DEA.

We have made submissions on each draft to the EIA consultants, GIBB, which have been largely ignored, and have not resulted in the changes to the EIA report we hoped for.

We have therefore written to the DEA giving reasons why we believe they should reject this report.

To see our submission, including a short summary, click here: KAA Submission to DEA

Nuclear PR scrapes bottom of the barrel

Posted on by Koeberg Alert

These are desperate times for the nuclear industry.  Rising costs, the ongoing nightmare of the Fukushima clean up, the phasing out of nuclear power by some countries, fewer new orders every year, and dramatic cost and time overruns for the few projects under way makes new nuclear a very hard sell indeed.

And in South Africa, the star of the nuclear lobby, President Zuma, has become a falling star. Other senior ANC members have begun loudly denouncing his ties to corporate interests, in the form of the Guptas, including uranium mining.

Like the thrashing of a dying beast, the industry has been churning out press releases and placed articles at a frantic pace.  In South Africa, the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa (NIASA) has in the past paid people such as Andrew Kenny and Dawid Serfontein to pen articles for the local press promoting nuclear power.  Continue reading →

The Case for Non-nuclear Power Options

Posted on by Koeberg Alert

by Keith Gottschalk

Intelligent people often hold a range of views on complex issues, especially where more than one criterion is involved, and where some criteria may not be easily quantified.

Newspaper editorials have criticized the Government’s abuse of secrecy – what democracy classifies its future electricity plans as secret? – as it proceeds with its programme to build six to nine extra atomic power reactors totalling 9600 MW of electricity. The reason for secrecy is defensive: these plans cannot stand up to scrutiny for economic rationality.
Continue reading →

Proposed nuclear build outside Cape Town – public participation meetings

Posted on by charscribe

The government is asking the South African public for their input on the proposed nuclear build 30km outside Cape Town in a series of public meetings. These meetings are always attended by the few pro-nuclear stakeholders and it is important that the public also attend to share their concerns about safety, costs and environmental issues.

When?

Melkbosstrand: 18:00, 12 October 2015
Atlantic Beach Golf club

Kenliworth: 18:00, 13 October 2015
Kenilworth Community Presbyterian Church

Is it really worthwhile attending?

Yes! South Africa has an excellent constitution and powerful laws Continue reading →

Electricity and nuclear costs workshop in Khayelitsha

Posted on by Gina van Dyk

In June representatives of Eartlife Africa Jhb and Greenpeace visited Cape Town and the Hermanus area.  Several meetings with other organisations were arranged, including one in Woodstock with Right To Know activists.  Plans for a national ‘nuclear school’ where discussed, but funding would be required. This would be unlikely to happen before October and  since the next draft of the Nuclear-1 Environmental Impact Report was due to be released around October, it was agreed that workshops should be arranged before that if possible.  To maximise impact, the workshops would be in ‘train the trainers’ format, to capacitate activist leaders to speak authoritatively on the nuclear issue. Continue reading →