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As the threat of stage 6 load shedding looms, it has been reported that Koeberg’s unit 2 will be starting up soon after being offline for a month longer than planned, despite the fact that replacing the steam generators, the main reason for the long six month outage, has not been done. The loss of unit 2’s generating capacity is 920MW, or about one extra stage of load shedding, which some estimate costs the economy R100-million per hour of load shedding. 

On 18 January Koeberg’s unit 2 was taken offline to do major refurbishment work which was scheduled to take six months. Simultaneously, the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) granted permission for the three steam generators inside the containment building to be replaced, and also suspended Peter Becker, the civil society representative, from the NNR Board. Becker was later dismissed by Minister Mantashe for reasons which included that he allegedly asked too many questions.

It seems that Becker was not the only one with questions, and when the contractors from Framatome, a French company, arrived to work on the steam generators they asked where the building was to house the old radioactive steam generators. Apparently Eskom and the NNR had overlooked the fact that this had not been completed and the French refused to start work for safety reasons. According to a submission from NUM (National Union of Mineworkers), Framatome charged Eskom a R1-billion penalty for wasting their time. So far Eskom has declined to confirm or deny this figure.

“What is more concerning is that Eskom and its subcontractors had ample time to do the necessary preparations,” says OUTA’s Legal Project Manager, Brendan Slade. “Eskom has been planning to extend Koeberg’s life from as early as 2015 – although this was planned without the required NNR approvals or any public consultation – and the three steam generators had arrived by March 2021 but the installation was delayed until this year. The impact of the most recent delay is further exacerbated by a declining level of public confidence in the NNR, which oversees the process.

“More delays will have a snowball effect – our installed nuclear capacity will not be able to fill the generation shortfall sufficiently and will ramp up Eskom’s bill even further – a cost to be borne by the public,” says Slade. 

“Taking a unit of Koeberg offline during the height of the load shedding crisis was always a questionable decision,” says Koeberg Alert Alliance’s spokesperson, Peter Becker. “Eskom argued that it was necessary to ensure that the plant could run beyond 2024, even though the NNR has not given approval for that extension of the life of Koeberg. The current operating licence for Koeberg from the NNR expires in July 2024. After Framatome refused to start the work, it turned out that taking unit 2 offline in January was a very, very expensive mistake.”

For an unknown reason, the duration of the outage of unit 2 was still going to be six months from January 2022 despite the fact that the most complex part of the work, replacing the steam generators, was deferred to 2023 according to an Eskom statement. All that had to be done was refuelling, which normally takes five to six weeks.

The result has been 920MW of power offline since March 2022 for no benefit at all, equivalent to about one stage of load shedding. For every hour of one stage of load shedding, the cost to the country has been calculated to be R100-million.

Eskom has stated that unit 2 will be offline again for another six months in 2023 when they will then replace the steam generators. “Given the track record, it seems unlikely that it will be completed within the six months,” says Becker. 

Energy analyst Clyde Mallinson says: “Due to the entire Koeberg life extension refurbishment process, at least one unit is planned to be offline for 19 months during 2022 and 2023. Based on the actual figures of load shedding from 18 January to 30 June, at the same average rate these outages will cost the economy R289-billion, or R58-billion if we use Eskom’s conservative figure of R20/kWh, rather than the more widely used figure close to R100-million per kWh. 

“Add to this the estimated additional spend on diesel to run Eskom and gas turbines run by Independent Power Producers of about R12-billion (over the 19 month period), and you have sufficient savings to construct 4GW of renewables that will produce the same annual energy output as Koeberg. You can even throw in 2GW of power storage, and would still have plenty of change to spare. All of this is based on the lower R20/kWh figure, and before the actual costs of the refurbishment are considered,” says Mallinson. 

“Eskom has previously estimated that the Koeberg refurbishment will cost R25-billion, but that was before the delays and penalties. In the past, major work done by Eskom has doubled or even tripled in price as the work progressed. Medupi not only cost more than double the initial estimates but shortly after it was completed one of the turbines was blown up due to incompetence during routine maintenance. It is not impossible that the work on Koeberg will cost R50-billion, if indeed it is ever completed,” says Becker. 

“As KAA has been advocating for over a year, both units at the plant should have been left running during 2022 and 2023 to reduce the load shedding the country has been experiencing. This is the time to rapidly build renewable energy capacity, not to pour money into a 40 year old plant that is reaching the end of its design lifetime,” concludes Becker. 

It is becoming more and more apparent that Eskom needs to take a hard look at the money being sunk into Koeberg, what the bungling has cost the country so far, and the wisdom of pressing ahead with the refurbishment of this ageing plant.