South Africa’s National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) board has approved the 20-year life extension for unit 1 of State power utility Eskom Holdings’ Koeberg NPP, but deferred a decision on unit 2 until late 2025 because an assessment of the reactor’s safety case is still ongoing. The decision came only days ahead of the expiry of unit 1’s licence and effectively extended its operating life until 21 July 2044.
NNR CEO Ditebogo Kgomo said the board had made the decision on unit 1 in line with governing legislation, international safety standards and following a public participation process, which included eight public hearings. “With regards to the representations received during public consultations, we found that the substantive concerns raised on health, safety and environment were adequately addressed by the licence conditions and/or the safety case,” Kgomo said.
Eskom later confirmed that it would continue to operate unit 1 until January 2025, when the it would be shut down for its next scheduled refuelling and maintenance outage. Eskom added that once the current unit 2 outage was completed it would be returned to service, with the NNR decision on its extension to be made prior to 9 November 2025.
Eskom said recently that it had begun to see an improvement in generating performance and had not implemented rolling power cuts for more than 100 days. Eskom has struggled for years to adequately supply electricity from its ageing fleet of generation facilities, with problems exacerbated by mismanagement and corruption. The company had routinely implemented rolling power cuts leading to daily outages of up to 10 hours.
South African Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, used his first official media conference since the recent general election to explain that the country’s electricity infrastructure is facing a dual threat from defaulting municipalities and rapid population growth. These challenges have resulted in deteriorating infrastructure and increased instances of load reduction, impacting millions of households and businesses across the country.
“Collectively, municipalities are owing Eskom ZAR78bn (4.3bn) and… a lot of this is irrecoverable,” he said. “There’s no possibility under the sun that we are going to collect that and it’s important that we resolve this picture.” However, he praised Eskom noting that South Africa had 17,000 MW in unplanned capacity losses this time last year, which Eskom has improved to 12,000 MW through generation recovery efforts at its coal-fired power stations.
The Koeberg NPP comprises two 970MWe pressurised water reactors built by Framatome, which began commercial operation in 1984 and 1985. They generate about 5% of the South Africa’s electricity. Eskom applied to the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) in May 2021 to extend the operational life of the Koeberg NPP beyond the current 40-year licence term. In January, NNR agreed to assess the two units separately. This authorised the operation of Koeberg 1 until 21 July 2024 and Koeberg 2 until 9 November 2025, in line with their operational design life.
