South Africa desperately needed nuclear in its power generation mix to contribute to sustainable interim and longer-term energy supply, past Eskom CEO Dr Ian McRae said on Thursday.

Speaking at a nuclear forum in Pretoria, McRae said that South Africa needed to move away from a heavy-biased coal-generation industry and start introducing nuclear and other options to its generation mix.

Currently, South Africa generates around 80% of its power from coal-fired power stations.

He emphasised that strong governance and leadership was needed towards the implementation of an efficient energy plan, and called on industry to apply pressure on government to release its revised and updated integrated resource plan by its stated September deadline.

Meanwhile, he urged nuclear industry participants not to wait for government to "catch up", but to "run ahead" with the development and display of its nuclear capabilities.

"Now is the time for urgent action, nothing focuses the mind more than when the lights go out. I believe that we have the leaders in South Africa to implement a successful energy plan, but they need to wake up and move the plans ahead."

Twelve years ago, South Africa had a white paper policy in place, which was similar to President Jacob Zuma's statements of power generation in his February State of the Nation address, McRae noted.

"Inactivity has led us to the current electricity crisis and the country having to deal with tight reserve margins. We need take South Africa out of this energy crisis, using nuclear as a base load technology," he said.

South Africa's Energy Minister Dipuo Peters has previously stated that the country needed 20 000 MW of new capacity by 2030.

Without significant capacity building, load shedding and even black outs can be expected for the next 20 years, if the country's growth domestic product growth is higher than 3%.

McRae also stressed that the power utility Eskom needed to be unbundled into different competing companies to introduce diversity and competition in the country's power generation.

He emphasised the importance of the independent systems operator (ISO), which government is establishing to attract independent power producers (IPPs) to participate in the country's energy industry.

"Eskom cannot survive as a monopoly going forward, IPPs are essential to meeting the country's needs. However, IPPs will not be eager to participate in the industry without an ISO."

The introduction of an ISO will see South Africa move away from having Eskom as the single buyer of electricity and is expected to level the playing fields for IPPs.

McRae also called for the Pebble Bed Nuclear Reactor (PBMR) project to be revised.

"South Africa has significantly invested in this project and developed a great and practical technology and now it seems that the US will benefit from our efforts."

"We need decisions to be made by government to lead us into a specific development direction - urgently," he said.

The National Treasury indicated in February that the government's allocation to the PBMR Company would all but end, falling from R1,74-billion in 2009/10, to R3,6-million this year.

Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan later explained that the government had to reduce its cash injections to State-owned enterprises, such as the PBMR programme, as its pockets were "no longer deep enough" the fund it on the scale and length of time required.