Necsa wants to get involved with small modular reactors

The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) has formally requested Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe to change its mandate, to allow it to become involved in the generation of electricity from nuclear energy. So Necsa CEO Loyiso Tyabashe has told Engineering News in an exclusive interview. Currently, only the State-owned national electricity utility Eskom is permitted to operate nuclear power plants (NPPs). The country has only one NPP, at Koeberg, north of Cape Town. Under South Africa’s current Integrated Resources Plan (IRP), the country is seeking to create 2 500 MW of new nuclear power generating capacity (although no nuclear capacity would come on stream for at least ten years after authorisation was granted). Necsa would like some of that allocation to be assigned to it.