The South African Government will no longer invest in the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project, whose cost is estimated at €3.2bn (€955m were already funded by the State). The company was supposed to develop technology for power generation but proved to be too costly for government. The PBMR was to have been a small-scale high-temperature reactor using fuel spheres of silicon carbide-coated uranium particles encased in graphite, with helium as the coolant, able to supply process heat as well as generating electricity. The nature of the fuel in particular gives the reactor a high degree of passive safety, exploiting inherent safety characteristics depending on the physical properties of the system without the need for intervention. Based on well-proved German technology, South Africa has been working on the PBMR project since 1993, but earlier this year PBMR Pty announced the loss of government funding, along with drastic staff cuts. At that point the government had initially decided to downsize the company by 75%, which would have allowed it to operate for up to 3 years.
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