Electricity minister meets Amazon-backed nuclear company with South African ties

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.

The expedition presumably formed part of South Africa’s effort to procure 2,500MW of new nuclear energy capacity over the next few years as it transitions away from coal power and toward cleaner technologies.

According to Rapport, the government’s plan supposedly includes procuring at least one small modular reactor (SMR) in addition to two larger conventional reactors.

The SMR could be deployed at the Pelindaba nuclear facility near Hartbeespoort in the North West.

X-energy has developed the Xe-100 Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), a type of SMR, as its first big product slated for commercial introduction.

A PBMR consists of a steel pressure vessel that holds enriched uranium dioxide fuel in graphite spheres the size of a billiard ball, informally dubbed “pebbles.”

These spheres generate heat, which is transferred by helium to boil water and generate steam to turn a turbine, which produces electricity.

With 220,000 pebbles, each Xe-100 is capable of generating 80MW of electricity and can be stacked with up to four reactors for a single 320MW plant.

X-Energy is currently constructing one such plant for Dow Chemicals in Seadrift, Texas, which is anticipated to be completed by 2028.

Amazon is also working with X-Energy to develop 4,500MW of modular reactor capacity for its data centres.

The involvement of Amazon will be key to streamlining and ramping up SMR production, according to South African venture capitalist André Pienaar.

Pienaar is chief executive officer of C5 Capital, one of X-energy’s biggest investors.

Pienaar previously said that C5 Capital was working to raise a further R9 billion to build a 320MW power plant in the Western Cape.

The firm has already completed a feasibility study for SMR in South Africa and found that the country had a significant edge over others due to already having nuclear power capabilities.

South Africa’s big nuclear potential

Pienaar said that South Africa had a skilled nuclear workforce that was in high demand elsewhere.

Perhaps some of the best examples of this are two other South Africans who have been instrumental in developing X-Energy’s reactor.

X-Energy’s chief scientist is Dr. Eben Mulder, who previously served as chief scientific officer at Eskom’s PBMR programme.

Mulder was also the North-West University Potchefstroom Post Graduate School for Nuclear Sciences and Engineering director and a professor in the School of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering.

X-Energy’s Xe-100 systems development and chief engineer — Dr. Martin van Staden — also comes from South Africa.

He obtained his degree from the North-West University and his doctorate from the University of Johannesburg.

Koeberg problems

Eskom’s sole nuclear power plant — Koeberg Power Station — has been among its most reliable plants for most of its nearly 40 years in operation.

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.

Yelland also criticised Eskom for recently failing to publicly report an outage of Koeberg Unit 1 in mid-September 2024.

“Five days after Koeberg Unit 1 has been shut down due to a fault on Wednesday last week, at the same time that Koeberg Unit 2 was also offline, Eskom finally admits the shutdown after this was being exposed in the media and public domain,” said Yelland.

“Coming five days after Unit 1 went offline while Unit 2 is offline too, shows a complete lack of transparency and a level of contempt for the interests and concerns of the public by Eskom and the National Nuclear Regulator.”

Eskom has maintained it notified all stakeholders it was required to inform after the unit’s shutdown.