State mum on price tag of proposed nuclear build

Government does not want the public to know how much it can and will spend on its ambitious nuclear build programme.

With a six-month deadline to award contracts for as many as eight reactors generating 9600 megawatts by 2030, the Department of Energy said yesterday the funding and finance models, in-depth technical studies on the cost of nuclear power and the economic impact and contracting strategy were off-limits at this stage.

“It is important to note that government is still to negotiate the price tag in the procurement process which is why the exact figures for the study cannot be made available to the public at this stage.

“These studies were done to ensure that South Africa is a knowledgeable customer,” the department’s deputy director-general Zizamele Mbambo said in Ballito yesterday.

Asked where government would get the money to fund the programme, which has been projected to cost anything from R400-billion to R1-trillion, Mbambo said he could not divulge such information due to “strategic reasons”.

“We as government have completed the finance and funding model which informs government’s position around this programme and what we have found is that these technical studies and models have strengthened government’s case to proceed with the programme.

“At this stage though, we have clearly indicated that the funding model cannot be discussed because of strategic reasons.

“We are still at a stage when we have done our investigations and we have our benchmarks and we will finalise the procurement process, then we can determine the definitive prices of what the technology vendors are putting forward as their actual prices,” he said.

Mbambo also refused to discuss the contracting strategy because it would be “premature to discuss it in public when the procurement process has not started”.