The Department of Energy (DoE) announced on Tuesday that the pre-procurement phase for South Africa’s proposed roll-out of a nuclear new build programme had been completed, following the latest in a series of workshops with vendor countries and their companies.

Consultations had been held with seven counties, including Canada, China, France, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US, with the most recent so-called vendor parade workshop having been held with Canada and Japan in late March.

The DoE said the workshops involved vendor countries presenting their nuclear technology offerings and how they intended meeting South Africa’s objective of building an industry around what could be a 9 600 MW build programme.

The process, which had endured for six months and had involved 80 South African nuclear experts, would guide government decision-making in the development of a “transparent, fair, cost effective and competitive procurement process” for the selection of a strategic nuclear partner or partners.

The procurement process would be presented for approval by the Energy Security Cabinet Subcommittee and endorsed by Cabinet.

“Once endorsed by Cabinet the procurement process will be presented for deliberation by Parliament, and then government will launch a procurement process well in time to ensure that South Africa commissioned the first unit by 2023 and the last unit by 2030,” the DoE said in a statement.