A time for ingenuity and a new beginning

Summary - Let us abandon industrialisation based on the unlimited use of resources, such as the burning of carbon and uranium for energy, and reach for a new paradigm. The industrial paradigm of modernisation has jeopardised our planet and over-concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few, creating greater social and economic divisions than ever before. We need to map out an energy path that drastically reduces our dependence on our coal and uranium resources. After 2012, according to the Kyoto Protocol, we will have to stop burning coal at a rate that contributes one to two per cent of global greenhouse gas. At the same time, however, the country faces a growing demand for energy and sooner or later we will have to add capacity. Those who operate in the old paradigm argue that the most effective way to do so is to invest more in nuclear energy. There are numerous reasons for rejecting their argument. They claim, firstly, that nuclear power reduces the necessity to burn fuels that create greenhouse gases. But this is not true when the whole chain of nuclear operations is considered, including mining, enrichment, transportation, construction and waste disposal. In the 1970s and 1980s, a coal-fired power station at Valindaba with an output equivalent to 25 per cent of Koeberg was devoted exclusively to powering the enrichment process. Secondly, while all energy generation involves risk, the risks of nuclear power are unnecessarily high and are borne disproportionately by nuclear plant workers and surrounding communities. If an accident occurs, the risks multiply enormously. The consequences of a Chernobyl-sized disaster in the Western Cape, for example, would be devastating for the Cape floral kingdom, tourism, and the wine, wheat and fruit industries. Moreover, there would be a considerable amount of radioactive traffic. Uranium sent abroad for enrichment would be re-imported through Durban, trucked to Pelindaba for the manufacture of the pebbles, then down to Koeberg. South Africa has a notoriously high accident rate, so this will place an added risk on our roads. How many small municipalities en route would be able to manage radioactive spills? A third problem is the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons. To make pebble bed reactors economically viable, an export market will have to be created. How will we guarantee that importing nations will not divert nuclear materials for military purposes? Under apartheid that is precisely what South Africa did. Fourth, our regulatory capacity is already inadequate, and expansion of the industry will increase the problem. Fifth, a national policy on nuclear waste disposal has yet to be finalised, although we have generated waste for 40 years. The industry’s latest proposal, to deposit high-level waste in boreholes, should be emphatically rejected as it would pose an acute risk to our underground water supplies. Finally, the nuclear industry has an adverse impact on democratic values. It is secretive and centralised, has a reputation for cover-ups, is notoriously mendacious (often in the name of ‘national security’), and contributes to the militarisation of the state. Far more is to be gained from adopting more sensible and sustainable energy paths, including micro-hydro, together with demand-side management through conservation incentives. European countries have made great progress in the use of renewables, but South Africa still lacks the political will to take this route. The department of minerals and energy argues that renewables cannot deliver in bulk. Are the technical constraints really so insurmountable, or is this more to do with ideological positioning? Renewables would be more decentralised; energy could be generated locally and sold to the grid so that many communities would become net energy producers. Let us have a major public debate on the way forward, in which all voices are heard.

Let us begin to abandon “modernisation”, industrialisation based on the unlimited use of resources, such as the burning of carbon and uranium as our energy sources.

Instead of pursuing the inherited, twentieth-century path of development, and aping the maldevelopment and huge problems faced by the over-polluted North, let us take advantage of hindsight and reach for a new paradigm.

The new industrial paradigm is one which decentralises, spreads employment across society, provides opportunities for fuller economic and political participation, stamps out social and ecological disadvantage, and protects our resources and livelihoods for optimal future survival.

This is in sharp contrast to the industrial paradigm of modernisation which has jeopardised our planet and created greater social and economic divisions than ever before. It relies on over-concentrated economic and political power. It creates wealth for a few, and finds ways to maintain the impoverishment of the rest.

It needs no Cassandra to decry the outworn industrial model, because the planet is beginning to speak for itself — disruptions of climate, holes in ozone layers, biological extinctions, and poisoned soils. Social impacts include reduced employment, greater food insecurity and unaffordable basic services. The model penalises the already overburdened rural and urban poor, reducing their ability to participate as citizens.

In South Africa we struggled against discrimination and argued for the right to spread citizenship and rights for all, including our descendents. However, our outdated model of industrialisation works against this goal.

Why are we so wedded to the modernisation approach? Perhaps it is because we have huge mineral resources and our mining industry is determined that we use them up. Historically the industry kept prices down by avoiding the payment of decent wages and by not covering the costs of environmental health and rehabilitation. Can we afford to continue in this way?

Since energy is crucial to our continued industrialisation, this is an appropriate time to make national choices about our preferred path. We can either remain prisoners of our coal and uranium resources, or we can map out an energy path which drastically reduces these dependencies.

The apostles of modernisation say that the latter path is unrealistic. In contrast I will argue that, if we are mindful of the future and if we have a preference for an increasingly democratic society, the sooner we plan and implement a sustainable energy path for survival, the better.

Although we have huge coal resources now, we cannot rely on them forever. After 2012, when South Africa is expected to have a commitment to the Kyoto Protocol, it is more than likely that countries like ours — part of the developing world, but over-reliant on coal-burning — will have to make a start on reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The world will expect us (as well as India, China, Colombia and Brazil) to stop burning so much coal.

At that point we will have to decide whether to defy the world, and continue to burn coal at a rate which contributes one to two per cent of global greenhouse gas. Or do we embark on diversification of our energy supplies?

Another reason provided by the energy industry for diversification is that in South Africa growing energy demand will soon outstrip supply. The degree of imminence of this situation is debatable. But sooner or later, we will have to add capacity to the system.

Those who operate in the old paradigm have made the argument that the most effective way of adding capacity is to extend our investments in nuclear energy. There are numerous reasons for rejecting their proposal, of which I will focus on six.

First, there is the claim that nuclear power reduces the necessity to burn fuels that create greenhouse gases. While this might be so for the operations of power reactors, let us not forget the entire chain of nuclear operations, including mining, conversion and enrichment of uranium, transportation, construction of reactors, waste disposal, decommissioning of worn out reactors, and the rehabilitation of mines and contaminated power stations.

When the whole chain is considered, the industry cannot claim the process subtracts from the production of greenhouse gases. Enrichment alone is hugely energy-intensive. In the 1970s and 80s, our own efforts at Valindaba required the building of a thermal (coal) power station dedicated entirely to powering the enrichment process: its output was equivalent to 25 per cent of that of Koeberg. We no longer have the Valindaba plant, so, for the pebble bed reactors, we are likely to contract out the uranium for enrichment, thus passing on the pollution load to others. The chain remains energy-intensive and a net contributor to greenhouse emissions.

Secondly, all energy is generated under conditions of risk. But, as the environmental movement contends, the risks of nuclear power are substantial and unnecessarily high. Protection against doses of radiation is never absolute; contrary to what many health physicists and the industry maintain, there is no “safe” dose of radioactivity. Whilst we all live with considerable amounts of background radiation, adding concentrated amounts of human-generated radiation can only deepen the risk.

The health risk is disproportionately borne by workers in radioactive plants and by neighbouring communities. Recently noseweek (issue 53, 17 to 19 February 2004) alerted us to Koeberg’s failure to inform a nuclear worker of his having contracted leukaemia on the job, seemingly to avoid compensatory payments. Medical records were expunged.

Our national nuclear regulator (NNR) has recently clarified that epidemiological studies of communities living adjacent to nuclear plants have never been conducted, so there are no baseline studies, nor has the manifest risk ever been quantified. Multiplying the amount of nuclear facilities will clearly intensify such risks. Whilst the pebble bed reactor’s engineers claim that the technology is “inherently safe”, there are those within the industry who argue that should the configuration of pebbles in the reactor be disturbed by, say, seismic activity or unpredictable movements of pebbles, the core could become unstable and create safety problems.

If an accident occurs, the risks multiply enormously. While a Chernobyl-sized accident is unlikely, the consequences of a similar disaster, if extrapolated say to the Western Cape (prospective home of the pilot pebble bed reactor), would devastate the country’s wine, wheat and deciduous fruit industries. The repercussions would include the creation of huge problems of evacuation and human displacement and loss of livelihoods, they would wreck the unique Cape floristic kingdom for generations, destroy the region’s important tourism industry, and raise considerably the incidence of human and animal cancers, genetic damage and blood diseases.

While this scenario is an extreme one, no variants of it can be entirely ruled out in the event of a nuclear accident.

Accepting the pebble beds requires us to accept a considerable amount of radioactive traffic on our roads. Uranium will be sent abroad for enrichment, re-imported through Durban harbour, trucked to Pelindaba outside Pretoria for the manufacturing of the pebbles, and then down to the Koeberg pilot reactor in the first instance. Should further plants be constructed, our radioactive traffic will multiply accordingly. South Africa is notorious for its traffic accident rate, so pebble bed technology will be placing an extra risk on our roads. And are the many small municipalities en route capable of managing radioactive spills and potential evacuations?

A third argument against pursuing the nuclear route is the potential proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In the post-9/11 era, this concern is not merely academic. To make pebble bed reactors economically viable, an export market will have to be created. How will we guarantee that the importing nations will not have cause to divert nuclear materials for military purposes? Under apartheid this is precisely what the South African nuclear industry did. Now that we have disarmed, how are we going to ensure we do not create opportunities for other rogue nations to copy our past behaviour?

Argument four is linked. It is a concern that our regulatory capacity is inadequate at home. The NNR has confessed to a shortage of capacity, there being a lack of personnel to do adequate licensing and surveillance of the industry at existing levels of activity. Expanding the industry inside the country will add to the regulator’s headaches. Under current conditions the task is already too difficult in South Africa, where at least some capacity exists. Exporting pebble beds to other developing countries, with their minimal regulatory frameworks, adds considerable risk of both contamination and proliferation.

Fifth, we have a weak and flawed system for disposing of nuclear waste. Despite having generated nuclear waste for at least forty years, we have yet to finalise a national policy on the management of nuclear waste. There are waste dumps at Pelindaba and at Vaalputs in the Northern Cape, which are meant for low and intermediate-level waste storage. The high-level waste, mainly spent fuel from reactors, is stored on site at Koeberg in cooling ponds. Initially this was meant to be a temporary solution for cooling down the fuel rods before disposal elsewhere, while awaiting the outcome of national policy setting the terms of and location for the disposal of high-level waste. However, it seems now that used up fuel rods will remain permanently on site at Koeberg. The ponds have had to be “re-racked” to accommodate the unforeseen load.

The draft policy presents no solution to the problem, but instead talks in generalities about the hugely expensive options of deep geological disposal or of reprocessing. Meanwhile the nuclear industry’s latest proposal is to explore the potential for depositing high-level waste in our country’s boreholes. The risk to our aquifers — our underground water supplies — is particularly acute under increasing conditions of aridity, and needs to be resisted without compunction.

My final, sixth, reason for rejecting the nuclear route is the adverse impact it has on the extension of democratic values. Of necessity, the industry is secretive and centralised. It has a reputation for cover-ups, especially of cost over-runs, and is notoriously mendacious, often in the name of “national security”. It contributes to the militarisation of the state, having to use force to ensure the integrity of nuclear facilities. The state is usually implicated in subsidising the industry, hence its interest in its security.

Despite the industry’s role in the production of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s, this was never examined by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Documents alluding to the bomb programme were systematically destroyed, and efforts are now under way to recuperate as much as possible of our nuclear history, thanks to the South African Historical Archive, a unit based at Wits University. Embarking on a new extension of the industry’s life will, nevertheless, feed a culture of impunity and lack of accountability which our young democracy can ill afford.

The arguments above are not part of a Luddite attitude, but instead are linked to the notion that far more is to be gained from adopting other, more sensible and sustainable energy paths. These options involve a combination of renewable energy sources (including micro-hydro), plus demand-side management through the expansion of energy conservation mechanisms and incentives.

The case for using more renewable energy sources in our energy mix is unimpeachable, as was evident from the UN conference on renewables in Bonn held recently. Much depends on the degree of investment, and incentives for partnerships. Countries like Spain, Denmark and Germany have made great progress in the use of renewables. Germany now derives around 13 per cent of its energy needs from wind power.

South Africa still lacks political will in going this route. Recent attempts to set up wind farms in the Western Cape were seriously delayed due to bureaucratic holdups. The department of minerals and energy (DME) has consistently failed to incentivise the more systematic introduction of renewable power sources, and early experiments seem to have been set up for deliberate failure. The argument is that renewables cannot deliver in bulk. Is this more to do with ideological positioning, or are the technical and financial constraints really quite so insurmountable?

Use of renewables would be more decentralised, with predictions that over 30 000 jobs could be created in their installation, operation and maintenance. Energy could be generated locally and sold to the grid so that many communities would become net producers of energy.

The department of minerals and energy has come to recognise the importance of demand-side management. But, without tackling major structural problems, this will be implemented in a piecemeal fashion. Given South Africa’s history of residential segregation, we cannot succeed in energy conservation without setting up an efficient, safe, affordable public transport system. This will involve simultaneous incentives to move away from linking employment to car allowances, especially giving upper management a sense of entitlement to the use of luxury automobiles. Government could act as a role model, with cabinet ministers using less ostentatious private forms of transport. Savings could be recycled into subsidising public transport and making it the preferred option for all commuters.

Let us have a major public debate on the way forward, in which all voices are heard. Let us design future energy supplies that are adequate for our needs and committed to sustainability, whilst being mindful of past mistakes.

[Dr David Fig is an environmental policy analyst linked to the movement for environmental justice in South Africa. His history of the South African nuclear industry, Uranium Road: Questioning South Africa’s Nuclear Direction, was published recently by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, copies of which are available on the foundation’s website at www.boell.org.za.]