Sigh....
Every night a solar array shuts down. Every night. It "malfunctions" every night. Every night at 6pm when demand is usually high, it's shuts down.
I will spell this out one last time for you. Per 100MW the KaXu solar array averages a annual output of 320GWh. Per 100MW Koeberg averages a annual output of 760GWh (malfunctions, refueling, outages and all). Do you understand this?
Do you understand that this is a difference of 440GWh. Do you understand that this ADDS huge economic value to a power station???
Do you understand that you have to take this huge difference in annual normalized generation into you cost calculation as well?
They are not incredibly dangerous. Do you fly? If you think a nuclear power station is "incredibly dangerous", please refrain from flying in a aircraft.
Kaxu One is a CSP plant (concentrated solar power), with molten salt storage., _not_ Solar PV.
It has 2.5-5hrs storage capacity too, which means it will provide power into the evening peak, which is when its needed.
CSP is more expensive than other solutions - solar or wind.
A similar wind sized or pv plant could be built for around a 1/3rd to a 1/4th the price. Possibly less, as Wind/kw pricing has been dropping radically over the last 5 years as higher turbines are being built.
Far cheaper, far faster to build, and better for the environment, as we can reduce the polluting coal plants in place.
There are reasons why a CSP plant was built though - mostly that we're a test bed for other countries, and Abengoa wants some example CSP projects. Construction costs are moot though. Private sector is paying for it,
not the tax-payer.
Eskom says - we offer 100MW up for bid for 20 years.
People bid, the winner(s) and Eskom sign a contract to purchase electricity produced at a given rate per kw for 20 years.
The private sector is perfectly happy to do this as costs are predictable, and the income is guaranteed assuming plant can be produced on time and on budget. So far, pretty much all of the renewable builds from the private sector side have been on time or built faster than expected.
The Eskom builds are over time, and over budget, as they don't really care - its not their money. Private sector cares, as its their own money.
Moving onto Nuclear.
The private sector doesn't want to invest in Nuclear in any way shape or form as the costs are typically over budget. Usually by double or triple initial estimates. The costs in case of failure are also un-budgetable, as are the costs to de-comission a plant.
So, only governments are building Nuclear. The costs are passed onto the taxpayer - and in our case, we have a tax base of roughly 2%.
< 2% pay the majority of our taxes.
Excellent writeup on taxes here -
http://www.rollingalpha.com/2015/10/22/but-who-pays-south-africas-tax/
Its already unsustainable for the middle class to subsidise government wages (40% of taxes earnt go to paying that), 10-12% goes to paying off debt, and another 17% to social grants. There is no money for large scale Nuclear. The interest on the debt alone would cripple the country. It's far more productive for us to ramp up the REIPP program, and allow for 30-40% renewable capacity.
We wouldn't need a Nuclear plant that we simply cannot afford, and we could close down quite a few of the polluting coal plants in the process.
Another good reason why not to go Nuclear is that the consumer can't afford it either. The build price for Nuclear, and the build time dictate the cost per kw [Financial charges are by and away the largest costs for a Nuclear plant, so build time is important, as the longer you take to build, the longer you incur costs, interest before you can start generating kw to recoup money paid..].
We could barely afford that at R7/dollar, at R17 its impossibly expensive.
So no, ***** Nuclear.
But heck, either one is 1000 times safer than coal :erm: