South Africa: Renewable energy or irradiation and gas fracking?

By Patrick Bond

February 18, 2015 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – After an explosive start to his State of the Nation Address, South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma turned to nuclear, coal, fracking and offshore drilling projects – but what about the country’s free sunshine, wind and tides?

On February 13, in Cape Town’s parliament hall, South Africa’s newest and cheekiest political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), fought gamely but lost their two dozen seats for the evening. They were expelled during the State of the Nation speech when making what they termed a “point of order”: asking whether President Jacob Zuma would “pay back the money” (about $20 million) that the state illegitimately spent on upgrading his rural mansion. As police ushered them out with extreme force, seven were hospitalised, one with a broken jaw.

The society only saw the fracas on journalists’ cellphones later, because the SABC public broadcaster refused to screen the floor, panning only a small area where the parliamentary leadership were gesticulating for police action. Showing surprising technical prowess but extremely weak political judgement, Zuma’s security officials had jammed cell phone and wifi signals in the hall just before the event began, creating outrage by opposition members of parliament and journalists alike. The Democratic Alliance then walked out in protest against armed police having cleared out the EFF MPs.

The dust settled 45 minutes later, with Zuma chortling and African National Congress (ANC) MPs cheering, and most observers sickened by the spectacle.

Still, much more important news would follow, though in the dull tone that Zuma reserves for formal speeches. Given the country’s fury at electricity load shedding – near daily outages of two to four hours – many were relieved that a substantial 14% of Zuma’s talk was dedicated to this theme: “We are doing everything we can to resolve the energy challenge.”

Listen more closely, though. Aside from building three huge coal-fired power plants, two of which are mired in construction crises, the other long-term supply strategy, accounting for one in six of his words on energy, is nuclear. By 2030 a fleet of reactors is meant to provide 9600 MW. Today we have 42,000 MW installed, of which 39,000 comes from coal. But the economy uses just 30,000 at peak. What with so much capacity unavailable, load shedding is set to continue for at least the next three years.

To truly “resolve” not defer the challenge will require a huge roll-out of public investment. The $2 billion Zuma promised the electricity utility Eskom is only a fraction of the vast bills we can see on the horizon, including $28 billion for just two of the three projected coal-fired stations, Medupi and Kusile. Together they will deliver 9600 MW capacity, which comes in at $3 million/MW for construction only, i.e. not including ongoing costs of coal and maintenance, nor the vast environmental damage from these mega-projects’ mega-pollution. Local water, land and air are being poisoned by coal, and climate change will be exacerbated by 30 million annual tonnes of CO2 emitted by each of the coal burners.

One reason for the high cost is the mounting repayment liability for the World Bank’s largest-ever loan, for $3.75 billion. South African environmentalists, community activists and trade unions, as well as Business Day newspaper and the Democratic Alliance, opposed the loan five years ago; were there justice, it should now be considered “Odious Debt’.

One reason they were united was what the public protector had in 2009 termed Medupi’s “improper” conflicts of interest involving Eskom chairperson Valli Moosa. Though he was on the ANC Finance Committee at the time, Moosa approved Hitachi as the main supplier of the $3.3 billion boilers, knowing that the ANC’s Chancellor House had a 25% share of its local subsidiary.

That share was secretly sold to a mainly internal management team last July. But by all accounts the ANC investment was a fiasco, even top leaders including then treasurer Matthews Phosa and public enterprises minister Barbara Hogan admitted.

The ANC is very good at winning elections, but its boiler-making skills need improvement: no fewer than 7000 welds required repair last year, which was one of the main reasons for the three-year delay in firing up Medupi. Further delays are anticipated due to a failure to properly test the boilers with sufficient steam pressure.

Nuclear

Next comes nuclear. The cost of $100 billion for 9600 new MW of power – a guestimate at this stage – does not include ongoing expenses for uranium, transport and permanent safe storage. Illustrating the financial risk, the main French company bidding for South Africa’s attention is Areva, the world’s largest nuke builder – a company facing potential bankruptcy after its credit rating was cut to junk status in November.

Another huge risk is obvious: corruption. Zuma proclaimed “a fair, transparent, and competitive procurement process to select a strategic partner or partners to undertake the nuclear build programme”. Hmm. Replies Moulana Riaz Simjee of the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute, “This nuclear deal poses an enormous corruption risk. It is happening in secret and will make the arms deal look like a walk in the park.”

With prescient timing, the Mail & Guardian last week exposed a Moscow foreign ministry website that provides details about the extent of the nuclear deal that Zuma had already cut with Vladimir Putin six months ago. The contract indemnifies Russian suppliers from any nuclear accident liabilities and gives “special favourable treatment” for taxes.

A durable concern with nuclear energy is safety because three of the world’s most technically advanced countries – Japan, Russia and the US – conclusively demonstrated its catastrophic danger at Fukushima (2011), Chernobyl (1996) and Three Mile Island (1979).

When South Africa’s only nuclear power plant, Koeberg, was hurriedly shut down in 2006 due to “human instrumentality’, as minister of public enterprises Alec Erwin initially described the “sabotage” (actually, just a loose bolt), he drew attention to the nuclear energy proliferation threat: the damage a dirty bomb can do if waste gets into terrorists’ hands.

Indeed, the real Koeberg sabotage was carried out in 1982 by ANC Umkhonto we Sizwe soldiers under the command of fabled Communist Party leader Joe Slovo. The bombings caused $45 million worth of damage just prior to the plant’s launch, a major blow against apartheid.

But post-apartheid security forces were also humiliated, 20 years later, when Greenpeace activists snuck into Koeberg using dinghies, climbed a seawater pump building and unfurled banners to illustrate the ease of entry – and resulting danger to Cape Town – were the nuclear plant to again come under attack.

Other civil society activists work hard against nuclear: to name a few, the National Union of Mineworkers’ Sibusiso Mimi, Mike Kantey from the Coalition against Nuclear Energy and Trudy Malan from the Thyspunt Alliance in Jeffreys Bay, where one of the world’s greatest surf waves is threatened by a proposed power plant.

Greenpeace continues vibrant anti-nuke protests, this month bringing the ship Rainbow Warrior to local ports and, last week, once again unveiling its opponents’ security lapses by disrupting the opening session of Cape Town’s second Nuclear Industry Congress Africa with a banner hang declaring, “Nuclear investments cost the earth.”

In 2005, Earthlife Africa and the Pelindaba Working Group had a duel with former president Thabo Mbeki over the nuclear danger. Mashile Philane and Muna Lakhani were among those who discovered high radioactivity near Pelindaba nuclear instrument calibration site a few dozen kilometres west of Pretoria.

According to geologist Stefan Cramer, radiation readings at Pelindaba were 200 times higher than naturally occurs, and moreover, within a few metres of a housing project. Radioactive ores were buried in shallow concrete containers, with an open gate and inadequate warning signs.

Such citizen advocacy helped halt South Africa’s zany Pebble Bed nuclear experiments, in which a generator was meant to be collapsed on top of pebble storage units after its life span, saving storage costs. But regrettably $1.5 billion of taxpayer funding was wasted, mostly under finance minister Trevor Manuel’s nose (his successor Pravin Gordhan pulled the plug).

This humiliated Mbeki at a bad time, just prior to his receiving the United Nations Champion of the Earth award in New York. He attacked the environmentalists’ “reckless statements” as “totally impermissible”. His energy minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (who is now UN under secretary general and head of UN Women) threatened Earthlife with legislation against “incitement” and “the spreading of panic-causing information”.

Within hours, however, the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa confirmed the problem by constructing a new fence and putting up hazard signs. “I admit that the fence around the area is not up to scratch”, said spokesperson Nomsa Sithole.

Fracking