ISS Seminar Cape Town: SA Nuclear Power Plans: Securing our Energy Future or Another Fukushima Disaster?
Date: 2011-07-26
Venue: , ISS Cape Town office
, 2nd floor
, Amoury Building
, Buchanan Square
, 160 Sir Lowry Road
, Woodstock
, Cape Town
RSVP:
Ms. Shahnaaz Parker
Tel +27 21 461 7211
Fax +27 21 461 7213
E-mail: [email protected]
The Institute
for Security Studies’ Corruption & Governance Programme invites you to a
public seminar entitled:
SA Nuclear Power Plans: Securing our energy
future or another Fukushima disaster?
In the midst of the Japanese nuclear plant disaster at Fukushima
in March 2011, the South African Cabinet provided an endorsement of a 20-year
electricity plan for the country which included significant amounts of nuclear
energy in it. It is expected that almost a quarter of South Africa’s
electricity supply will come from nuclear sources before mid-century. The
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for Nuclear 1 has been issued for public
comment, indicating that plans to build nuclear power stations to meet these
targets are already well underway. This
decision has come at a time when major industrial states, notably Germany, are
either debating or have abandoned the nuclear power option.
South Africa is faced with the dual challenges of addressing a
shortfall of energy supply while ensuring that this does further contribute to
climate change. Both are crucial to ensuring human security and economic
development. It is, however, argued that should nuclear power be considered as an option to deal
with these challenges, it must be placed within the context of issues around
safety and other risks. Despite government
claims that risks of a nuclear disaster in the country are low, the disaster at
the Fukushima plant and the resultant mass evacuation of thousands of people in
a 30km radius of the plant, forces South Africa to ask the following difficult
questions:
-
Should a similar disaster occur at the local Koeberg station, would
Cape Town’s residents be forced to leave the city, one of Africa’s most
economically active, vacant for thousands of years? These concerns are not far-fetched given
that as recent as 2010 Koeberg raised alarm bells when about 91 workers
were exposed to excessive radiation.
-
How much regulation do we need to make the nuclear option safe?
In addition, there are other issues to consider around democratic
decision-making and the costs of nuclear energy, namely:
-
Are we learning the lessons from the failed Pebble Bed Modular
Reactor (PBMR) project that was eventually shut down after only nine years
and after having consumed ten billion Rand of taxpayers money? And
therefore, are we ensuring that there is a transparency, accountability,
oversight and public participation in the processes to ‘go’ nuclear in
current plans? How do we avoid corruption from tainting this process?
-
Could the staggering
nuclear energy costs crowd out investment in cleaner, safer renewable
energy sources?
The
ISS is convening a seminar with a panel of experts from key sectors with
insights into these various aspects of the nuclear debate. This will provide a
space to open up some of these issues to deeper interrogation and to engage
them in a public forum. We hope to
encourage fair and robust debate that paves the way for a just and sustainable energy
future for South Africa.
Panelists:
-
Hon. Sisa James
Nijikelana, Chair: Portfolio Committee on Energy
-
Peter Bester,
National Nuclear Regulator
-
David Fig,
Environmental Policy Analyst
-
Rianne
Teule, Greenpeace Africa
-
Chair: Trusha
Reddy, Institute for Security Studies
Click here to download a map to the ISS Cape Town Office.
Please note that discussions occur under ISS Rules. Participants
are free to use the information presented, but neither the identity nor
the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant,
may be revealed without his/her express permission.
