About 1,500 tonnes of slurry in the chimney at Kusile power station has to be removed before a detailed assessment of the structural integrity can be made.
This was revealed by electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on Monday during his visit to the station in Mpumalanga to inspect the repairs which are under way.
He said an accurate cost of repairs could only be determined after an inspection.
“That [is] information management can only provide once they have gone inside the chimney to do the inspection to understand the defects,” he said.
In October last year a section of the Kusile unit 1 flue gas duct failed and three units went offline.
Ramokgopa said the temporary repairs of units one, two and three are on track and could be completed by December.
“We are on track to deliver on that promise. If we get these three units back, I think we would have made significant advances in the resolution of load-shedding. So we are on track, the civil work is done,” he said.
Units one, two, three, and five are offline — losing 3,200MW of power, about three stages of load-shedding.
“We are confident about our ability and the ability of management to deliver and we will update as we move from one stage to the other.”
The construction of the new temporary stack structure will cost more than R250m and this could increase.
He wouldn't rule out the possibility of higher stages of power cuts in winter but, working with Eskom, the ministry was striving to remain within “tolerable levels of load-shedding”.
“I am saying this reluctantly, because load-shedding is load-shedding. It is devastating to the economy. It will be irresponsible of me to declare there will be no stage eight. We are working very hard,” he said.
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