Eskom comes in for grilling over nuclear station

By Guy Rogers Environment & Tourism Editor

THE first round of public participation meetings for the proposed nuclear power station at Oyster Bay near St Francis was described yesterday as the most vigorous questioning Eskom has ever had to contend with.

Shortly after the meeting, attended by 250 people, Eskom spokesman Tony Stott said he had not encountered such vigorous questioning and active participation since they began visiting the five possible sites earmarked for South Africa‘s new nuclear project.

Participants asked his team why Coega was not considered as a preferred site for a plant. They also wanted to know how waste would be managed and what effect the power station would have on the chokka industry if there was a discharge of waste water into the sea.

The meeting was hosted by Eskom and consultants Arcus Gibb and Acer Africa in the Oyster Bay community hall, about 3km west of the proposed Thuyspunt site. The group have already visited the Brazil and Schulpfontein sites in the Northern Cape.

The other possible sites are Duynefontein, where the present Koeberg nuclear plant is, and Bantamsklip near Gansbaai, also in the Western Cape.

The best site will be chosen following a comprehensive environmental impact assessment and public participation process. Eskom will then use the site identified to establish a “pressurised water reactor” nuclear plant, that will generate 4 000mW of power.

The assessment process should be finished by January, 2009, with building to start at the end of that year. The plant should operate by 2016.

Ryszard Stryzelecki, a St Francis tourism operator, who was in Poland at the time of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear meltdown disaster in the Soviet Union – in which 56 people were killed, up to 9 000 contracted cancer, 336 000 people were evacuated and large tracts of land were contaminated – said he wondered why the huge power demand identified by Eskom had not been predicted.

“Why all of a sudden the rush? ” He said the Oyster Bay and St Francis areas were now very different from what they had been when Eskom bought the Thuyspunt site in the early 1980s.

“There are many more people here and tourism is the primary employer. Do you think tourists, especially from Europe, will want to see Thuyspunt if a nuclear plant is established there? Presently it is a national heritage site. What will it be called then?”

Stott said an important review of all studies would be done by top experts in the different fields.

Endangered Wildlife Trust representative Adri Barkhuysen said before decisions on power generation were taken, wider discussion was needed on how South Africa was going to achieve its targeted six per cent growth.

grogers@johnnicec.co.za