Ramokgopa meets with small nuclear reactor company X-energy

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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Ramokgopa meets with small nuclear reactor company X-energy

Minister of Energy and Electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa recently met with a nuclear reactor company that has received a $300-million (R5.3 billion) funding injection from Amazon, Rapport reports.

Ramokgopa's office told the publication that the minister visited US-based X-energy's facility on Friday to assess its capabilities.
 
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The same PBMR technology SA didn't want to fund anymore, and very American surnames in that X-energy.
 
A couple of issues:
- the main advantage that conventional nuclear has is that it's built at a large scale
- SMR (small modular reactors) cannot get to the scale that the argument of scale for mass manufacturing works
- Still no working SMR anywhere, China's supposedly the closest with APC 100, that's a 5 year timeline if all goes to plan (late 2026), but no idea about the cost
- it's ANC.

And then the usual, that South Africa has among the best wind/solar resources available anywhere in the world, that that and battery beats coal, and coal definitely beats nuclear in cost, with SMR set to be even more expensive than traditional nuclear.
 
Lord protect us from these morons running the country,... the ANC couldn't run a village in the middle of nowhere let alone a country, like wise they can't run nuclear and more then they could operate coal. this is just the opening overtures of the next nuxclear accident. Morons!!
 
Being the guinea piggies for SMR ain't a good idea. Let people with money fund the experiments. Once SMRs are commercially proven we can take a look at it. The amount of smoke and mirrors vs actual delivery on SMRs are freakin amazing. If they are so great where are they operating at scale? Nowhere.
 
However, the power utility has been experiencing significant delays with the plant’s 20-year life extension programme.

Eskom shut down the first of the station’s two units in December 2022 to replace its steam generators and conduct long-term refuelling.

This was supposed to be completed by July 2023, but the unit returned to service only in November 2023.

When Eskom took down Unit 2 for the same refurbishment in December 2023, it assured that it would learn from the first delay and ensure that the unit would be back online by June 2024.

However, energy expert Chris Yelland recently said Eskom also delayed the return to service to December 2024.

Both replacements would have happened earlier had Eskom not made an embarrassing mistake.

The initial plan was that Unit 1 would be taken down for its refurbishment in January 2022.

However, when the French contractor, Framatome, arrived on-site to begin the work, they found Koeberg had not built the containment structure for the old steam generators.

That was despite the utility having about 12 years to prepare.
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Peak Eskom under this government.

Not learning from mistakes and having 12-years to do something and not doing it.
 
thestaggy said:
Peak Eskom under this government.

Not learning from mistakes and having 12-years to do something and not doing it.
Click to expand...
Both replacements would have happened earlier had Eskom not made an embarrassing mistake.

The initial plan was that Unit 1 would be taken down for its refurbishment in January 2022.

However, when the French contractor, Framatome, arrived on-site to begin the work, they found Koeberg had not built the containment structure for the old steam generators.
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De Ruyter masterclass
 
X-Energy is far too white and the anc, no matter how dire things are, will not do business with them.
 
Fix what is available before spending Trillions.
25 GW unavialable capacity.
But we need to spend a fortune for 2.5GW.

If all was working we wouldnt need to look elsewhere..
 
Fuzzbox said:
Fix what is available before spending Trillions.
25 GW unavialable capacity.
But we need to spend a fortune for 2.5GW.

If all was working we wouldnt need to look elsewhere..
Click to expand...
There is an issue though that they do need to start planning new infrastructure now already as lots of power stations are reaching end of life.

We have:
- Arnot 2025-2029 (370W, 390W, 2x396W, 2x400W, totals around 2.2GW)
- Camden, was supposed to be 2023 latest, pushed to 2025 (1.5GW) with Grootvlei and Hendrina at a cost of $2.6bn. Note that first it was 2030, then changed back to 2025 for these, so will see what actually happens, but they were not maintained enough for 2030 probably.
- Grootvlei 2025-2028 (1.2GW) -> 2025
- Hendrina 2021-2027 (1.9GW) -> 2025
- Kelvin 420MW -> 2026
- Kriel 2026-2029 3GW
-----
So ~10GW needs to be decommissioned in the next 2-5 years, the only thing with a timeline approaching this is renewable.

Then the next wave starts 2035, this is the one where you can maybe look at larger power stations if that even makes financial sense (generally doesn't).
- Duvha 3.6GW 2030-2034
- Lethabo 3.7GW 2035-2040
- Tutuka 3.6GW 2035-2040
- Matimba 4GW 2037-2041
- Kendal 4.1GW 2038-2043

Duvha is 6 years away, that's pushing it timeline wise if any form of delay, which probably will be, so probs goes into renewable camp, so that means we need to have 14GW of replacement there.

And the rest is ~15GW has to come online in the next 15 years, that's 4x Medupi/Kusile, and those had original timelines of 6 years but ended up being 13+.
 
Bad Ballie said:
Lord protect us from these morons running the country,... the ANC couldn't run a village in the middle of nowhere let alone a country, like wise they can't run nuclear and more then they could operate coal. this is just the opening overtures of the next nuxclear accident. Morons!!
Click to expand...
 
Bad Ballie said:
Lord protect us from these morons running the country,... the ANC couldn't run a village in the middle of nowhere let alone a country, like wise they can't run nuclear and more then they could operate coal. this is just the opening overtures of the next nuxclear accident. Morons!!
Click to expand...
I agree and more dangerous is that the ANC "leadership" are not just morons but greedy and venal ones so they will take every opportunity to capcha and corrupt for self gain any scheme, as they have done with Eskom. It is primarily about looting, silly things like safety are well down the list of priorities.
 
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