Eskom is getting “closer and closer to the edge” as delays bedevil a race against time to extend the lifespan of Koeberg nuclear power station by another 20 years.
“Koeberg should have been managed much better. It is exceptionally upsetting,” electricity minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said in a report back of the country's energy crisis on Sunday.
The minister was referring to delays in the refurbishment project — which should have taken one of the station's two generation units out of operation at a time, at a cost of 920MW, but may now seen them both offline at the same time. That would remove a combined 1,840MW of generation and leave the Western Cape vulnerable to higher stages of load-shedding, as power would have to be imported along transmission lines from the north of the country.
One unit is offline for steam generator replacements. Unit two was initially due to undergo the same process for several months, starting in September. The upgrades need to be completed by July 2024 when the plant's operating licence expires before the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) approves extending its life by another 20 years.
“At end of it all it is the NNR which decides (on Koeberg’s life extension), and I don’t think they are just a rubber stamp, because nuclear safety is too serious a matter,” said energy analyst and consultant Chris Yelland.
We need to embrace modern technologies and new solutions to electricity supply. Nuclear and coal are not part of that.
Yelland said delays in upgrading the two reactor units with new steam generators suggested the plant would not be ready for its relicensing assessment next year. “At the end of the day Eskom is getting closer and closer to the edge. The bottom line is that the risk of not being ready for the life extension by the time the existing licence expires is becoming very, very real.”
In the event of a Koeberg no-show the province would need to ramp up efforts to secure additional supply, though short-term substitutes were limited. “It would be very useful to have more generation in the Western Cape, to give it more resilience,” he said, adding that importing power from upcountry came with inherent transmission risks.
Koeberg Alert Alliance member and energy activist Peter Becker stressed, however, that future energy policy needed to look beyond Koeberg, which only provided 4% of the country’s overall power. Koeberg's recent performance suggested it wasn’t a particularly reliable source of power, and over the past five years the plant had operated several times on only one unit.
Both units were down simultaneously for 48 hours earlier this year, without major disruption to the local grid. “We do not need Koeberg to run the grid. The fact that we’ve had both units off for 48 hours indicate that it is not crucial,” said Becker.
He said the province and City of Cape Town would be better off investing in smaller power plants, preferably renewable, to provide enough power to mitigate against load-shedding.
“Going forward we need to embrace modern technologies and new solutions to electricity supply. Nuclear and coal are not part of that. What would be entirely appropriate would be to look at the Koeberg site for a large battery installation that could provide the grid stability that Koeberg used to supply,” he said.
The enormous cost of refurbishing Koeberg, which still needed to be ascertained, could have gone a long way towards strengthening the grid, he suggested.
The prospect of both units going offline simultaneously has raised concerns. Premier Alan Winde said last week: “If both units are out of service at the same time, blackouts will intensify significantly. The Western Cape is in an especially precarious predicament, and it would be disastrous for our residents and our economy.”
Eskom said earlier this year that the steam generators were the last “large component replacements” needed to ensure Koeberg can operate safely under a life extension.
“The logistics of moving the steam generators from their installed position [vertical], out of containment [horizontal at an elevation of 20m] to placing them on a flatbed transporter [horizontal] can only be appreciated if one understands the size and weight of each steam generator,” said the power utility.
“Each of them is 22m tall (that’s a six story building), with a diameter of 4.5m (top half) and 3.5m (bottom half) and they each weigh over 320 tonnes (a Boeing 747 only weighs between 150 and 220 tonnes depending on its configuration).”
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