We just can’t afford to rush into huge nuclear deals

The furore around the secret nuclear power agreement recently concluded between South Africa and Russia can only be good for our young democracy.

Russia’s atomic energy agency, Rosatom, has backtracked on its statements of last month in which it suggested that Pretoria had signed a deal to procure eight nuclear reactors from it at a projected cost of R550-billion, saying its comments had been lost in translation.

It now appears that the deal signed in Vienna by Rosatom and our energy minister, Tina Joemat-Petterson, was a co-operation agreement paving the way for a procurement process. A similar agreement was signed with France yesterday and more co-operation pacts, with up to four other countries, are expected.

The Russians are probably going to get the lion’s share of the eventual nuclear procurement if President Jacob Zuma's cosying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin is anything to go by.

Zuma has kept eerily silent on his exact intentions but has made it clear that he believes nuclear power is essential to overcoming our severe power constraints.

All the opponents of atomic power can do now is try to persuade the government  to scale down the procurement  so that future generations  won’t be saddled with a  bill that could exceed R1-trillion. This is simply too high a price to pay for a country whose economy is faltering  and whose developmental challenges are immense.

The affordability argument is likely to resonate far more powerfully than  concerns about nuclear safety with  the ANC-led tripartite alliance, sections of which   have already expressed misgivings about the nuclear procurement.

Instead of a large-scale nuclear building programme it would make far more sense for South Africa to commission only one new nuclear power station while concerted efforts are made to harness  hydro-electric, solar and wind energy.

Germany, which will shed its reliance on nuclear power by 2022, is proving that some of  the new technologies  work and that they are gradually becoming more affordable.