South African nuclear scientists want to build a new generation of mini nuclear reactors, both to plug holes in their country’s blackout-plagued grid and to create an export industry for the future.
A company has designed a small modular air-cooled reactor that can be installed within three years on a site smaller than a football field and safely produce enough power for a city.
Similar projects are underway in other countries as the world faces the challenge of powering a future economy of electrification, heating and data centers while reducing carbon emissions.
Europe is divided on the way forward. Some countries, led by France, are betting on nuclear. Others, such as Germany, hope that renewables such as wind and solar power will replace fossil fuels and synthesis for the loss of access to Russia’s natural gas exports.
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South Africa will rely on coal for some time to come, but, already short on energy, it is betting on growing its nuclear program.
And some experts like Kelvin Kemm, a nuclear physicist and chief executive of Pretoria-based private company Stratek Global, believe South Africa is uniquely positioned to take the lead in developing fourth-generation reactors.
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“I believe the future is not just around the corner, I believe the future has arrived,” Kem told AFP in an interview in his garden on the outskirts of Pretoria.
“I see in the next half-dozen years, there’s going to be a massive global rollout of nuclear power of all sizes, that there’s going to be a huge change of heart in the next 24 months. I believe South Africa is already a leader. “
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South Africa’s civilian nuclear journey began in 1976 when construction began on the Koeberg nuclear power station, on the South Atlantic coast just north of Cape Town.
Commissioned 40 years ago, it has a capacity of just under 2,000 megawatts, a small fraction of the 27,000 MW that South Africa’s much-talked-about state electricity company Eskom can deliver, thanks largely to carbon-intensive coal-fired plants.
But domestic demand for electricity often peaks at more than 32,000MW a day, and South Africans face constant blackouts or “load shedding” of up to 12 hours a day, a severe strain on what should be a powerhouse economy. continent power.
In December, the government announced it planned to commission the first of a new series of nuclear plants by 2033, adding another 2,500 megawatts of capacity, while it plans to refurbish Koeberg and extend its life for another 20 years.
But even with solar panels popping up on homes and structures across the country, this still leaves the country short of energy in the medium term. This is where, in the designs of nuclear evangelists like Kemm, small modular units come into play.
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Large plants like Koeberg, with its two French-designed pressurized water reactors (PWRs), must be located next to the ocean to allow 80 tons of cold water per second to be pumped in to cool its reactors.
However, most of South Africa is dry, and the commercial hub of Johannesburg and its energy-intensive mines and industry are far from the sea. The capital Pretoria is as far from the cool Atlantic coast of Cape Town as Rome is from London.
This is where Stratek hopes to come in with the Modular High Temperature Reactor (HTMR-100).
According to Kemm, who is already in talks with international operators from France and South Africa, these air-cooled helium reactors can be installed in groups of up to 10 or usually six to disable steam turbines.
These plants will produce less than 300 megawatts each, enough for a large industrial mining complex or domestic use in a city the size of Pretoria.
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Weak rand
But above all they would be easier to procure — running less than a truckload of uranium fuel pellets in portable cricket-ball size spheres per year — and easily cooled without seawater.
By nuclear industry standards, with notoriously long and expensive development timelines, they would be relatively cheap and quick to install, and prices would drop after the first prototype unit was operational.
Kemm said the rand’s weakness meant his company could quote $470 million as the cost of the first reactor and seek to reduce subsequent builds to $300 million each.
“We are extremely cheap by world standards,” he said.
Source: AFP