After being offline since December 2022 for maintenance, refuelling and refurbishment, Unit 1 at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station is expected to return to full “steam” in July this year, but will not be operational until November.
Eskom confirmed it is scheduled to return online only on 3 November, so the initial six-month predictionis now much longer than anticipated.
The Koeberg Alert Alliance, an organisation of experts, was concerned about the delay, on top of Eskom’s plan to increase the nuclear plant’s life span by 20 years. This despite criticism from environmental groups concerned about nuclear-waste management.
Acting chief nuclear officer at Koeberg, Keith Featherstone, made the announcement of the delay on Thursday, saying the replacement of three steam generators at Unit 1 was complete.
Speaking during Premier Alan Winde’s 20th Digicon on Thursday, he said: “In a nutshell we were overly optimistic in terms of what we thought we could achieve and, in hindsight, if we could have done it differently we would have scheduled a [much] longer time for this intervention.”
He explained on Thursday in an online briefing that the steam-generator replacement was scheduled to be finished in early June, but unanticipated logistical obstacles along with issues around integrating a local workforce had slowed the timeline.
Duynefontein resident Gary du Plessis, who lives just a stone’s throw away from the power plant, said he is concerned about his safety.
“The plant should have been declared non-operational years ago, but instead it continues. Do people even think about our lives?”
More outages
Experts suggest that the delay of Unit 1 may result in more load shedding for the country.
Last month, Electricity Minister Kgosientso Ramokgopa expressed concern about the delays in Koeberg’s refurbishment, which could lead to higher stages of rolling blackouts continuing into 2024. The delays in returning Unit 1 to service were a particular headache for him, because he was concerned this was leaving the national grid short of 920 MW of power, and therefore higher levels of load shedding were being experienced.
Ramokgopa was also concerned that Unit 1 would not be online before Unit 2 is supposed to go offline.
Eskom still has to meet the strict requirements needed for a 20-year life extension of the power plant before Koeberg’s operating licence expires on 21 July 2024, after which both Unit 1 and Unit 2 must either be refurbished and relicensed or shut down.
The national power utility has applied to the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) to have two separate operating licences for Koeberg – one for Unit 1, where the licence would expire on 21 July 2024, and the other for Unit 2, where the licence would expire on 21 July 2025. While a decision by the NNR was still forthcoming, this may be possible because units 1 and 2 were commissioned and commenced operation a year apart, in 1984 and 1985, respectively.
Eskom was looking at possibilities to extend the deadline for the licence for Unit 2 as it was commissioned a year later.
