South Africa is developing a roadmap for a 2.5 GW nuclear project

The Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy of South Africa plans to start developing the 2,500 MW Nuclear New Build Programme (NNBP) soon, a roadmap for developing a new 2.5 GW nuclear power plant. A market test will be carried out to assess the investors interests and financing options; the government might allow a company or consortium to develop a modular nuclear power plant on a build, operate and transfer basis that would reduce the financial burden for the State. The government has not specified when construction would start and when the nuclear project would be commissioned, but it expects to complete the procurement process by 2024.

In 2014, the Ministry of Energy of South Africa signed an Intergovernmental Agreement with Russia's state-owned nuclear company Rosatom on nuclear cooperation and in December 2016 South Africa's national power utility Eskom started a process to build 6 to 8 reactors with a total capacity of up to 9,600 MW. However, the high cost of this Nuclear New Build Programme (around ZAR 1,000bn, i.e. over US$70bn at the time) prompted the South African government to cancel its nuclear plans in the first Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) released in August 2018. In October 2019, South Africa approved the 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP2019), a power sector development roadmap until 2030. The IRP2019 aims at diversifying the energy mix, to reduce reliance on coal, which covers 89% of South Africa's power generation and 70% of its primary energy consumption (2018), and included nuclear power that would be procured at a scale and pace that the country could afford.