The government will continue with the construction of nuclear power plants in South Africa, Head of Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), Phumzile Tshelane, has said.
Tshelane indicated that they had the two options of coal and nuclear to increase their power supplies as other methods were not ad good given the climatic changes.
South Africa had already signed nuclear agreements with Russia, China, France the US, Japan, South Korea and was working on a signature on the same with Canada.
Necsa served the role of the government’s advisor in the whole process and they would also process uranium.
The only nuclear plant in the country at the moment is the Koeberg facility near Cape Town which is operated by National utility Eskom supplying 4 percent of electricity in South Africa.
The South African Governments has plans to add 9, 600MW of atomic energy to the national grid by 2029 to help sort out the power shortages that the country has been experiencing affecting mining and factories output resulting to limited investment.
Other companies that are interested in construction of the nuclear plants include Areva, EDF, Toshiba’s Westinghouse Electric, China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding Corporation, Korea Electric Power and Rosatom.
Tshelane noted that Necsa was finalizing its audit report and working out issues relating to the old facility before it can present it to parliament.
South Africa has been trying to construct nuclear power plants which it sees as a solution to power problems in the country.
