South Africa issues RFI for its 2,500 MW nuclear power programme

The Department of Mineral Resources and Energy of South Africa has published a Request For Information (RFI) for a 2,500 MW nuclear new-build programme. The RFI will be opened until 15 September 2020 and is expected to provide the government with insight into the cost of the programme, possible ownership structures, cost recovery, the end user cost and the sustainability of the programme. In May 2020, the government had unveiled 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. The government didn't specify when construction would start and when the nuclear project would be commissioned, but it expected to complete the procurement process by 2024.

In December 2016, South Africa's national power utility Eskom launched its Nuclear New Build Programme, starting a process to build 6 to 8 reactors with a total capacity of up to 9,600 MW. However, the high cost of this 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 88% of South Africa's power generation and 75% of its primary energy consumption (2019), and included nuclear power that would be procured at a scale and pace that the country could afford.