South Africa set to get a nuclear power plant funded by Russia

Posted on : Monday , 29th September 2014

South Africa is set to get a new nuclear power plant, following the signing of a cooperation deal with Russia recently. Both sides noted that the nuclear power plant will have a production capacity of up to 9.6 GW based on Russian Technology, by 2030. The announcement was made during an International Atomic Energy conference in Vienna this Monday.

The South African Minister for Energy, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, noted that the agreement opens up doors for South Africa to access Russian Technologies, infrastructure development, funding, while at the same time providing solid and proper platform for future collaborations.

It was also noted that the deal will enable construction of eight nuclear power plants/units, something that would result in creation of jobs and bringing in orders amounting to USD $10bn to local industrial enterprises.

Earlier on, South Africa had noted that its focus was on coal, hydro and gas for energy, and construction of nuclear power plants might be delayed. This is due to the fact that that the country was facing power problems because of lack of investment in new power plants for over a decade.

At the moment, the state utility Power Firm Eskom is in the process of finishing new power plants that include Kusile and Medupi, massive coal fired firms with a combined capacity of about 9500MW.

Some of the companies that have shown interest in construction of nuclear power plants in South Africa include China’s Guangdong Corp Nuclear Power Holding Corp, Toshiba Corp and the Korean Electric Power Corp.

Source : www.constructionreviewonline.com

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