Current Process
Posted Tuesday 10 November 2009
The status of ESKOM’s proposal can be summarised as follows:
ESKOM is proposing to purchase and install the Areva 1600 MW nuclear power unit and has registered Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) for 3 sites and for the associated transmission line routes from these sites. Assuming that all 3 sites and the transmission line routes are approved at the end of the EIA process, there will initially be 2 Areva units per site (roughly double the capacity of Koeberg). Since they need 5 pairs of Areva units, however, to meet the load demand and there are only 3 sites under consideration, the first 2 sites are proposed to be the locations for the 4th and 5th pairs of plants. i.e. if Bantamsklip is the 1st site developed it will initially have 3200MW installed and then construction of a further 3200MW will commence five years later and the ultimate size of the installation will be 6400MW. It might be significant that Eskom has asked for the EIA’s to be done for 4000MW installations … they give “safety margin” as the reason for this but perhaps they are discussing uprated plants with Areva? The information that there will be a second pair of reactors at the first 2 sites has been clearly said by Eskom officials at public participation meetings but seems not to be stated too clearly elsewhere.
Construction crew for the nuclear plant will amount to 6000 workers at the peak of activity (plus their families of course). Major infrastructural work will be necessary prior to construction of the plants … It is questionable if even the road currently being built from Bredasdorp to Gansbaai will be up to the loads that must be carried to the Bantamsklip site. (A quick summary of the proposal for the power plants that are being subjected to EIA can be found by clicking on http://www.eskom.co.za/content/Nuclear-1%20Update%20of%20EIA%20KSW(12Feb-5Mar).pdf ).Transmission lines for the first stage of the installation will be 4 x 765kV + 3 x 400kV lines … it isn’t clear if these will be all that is required for the final power generation capacity anticipated if the generation capacity is later doubled. The servitude width for each 765kV line will be 80m and for each 400kV line 55m (the EIA is considering 80m servitudes for the 400kV lines to allow for future upgrading to 765kV, suggesting that this might be what will be done when the second pair of power plants is installed?). The tower height for the 765kV lines will be 33m and the base of the towers will be as much as 26m (anchor points) depending upon the type of tower selected. A “working area” of 70m x 50m is needed for each tower with the span between towers being about 450m.
The OCF is actively participating in 3 EIA processes associated with the proposed Bantamsklip nuclear power station … 1 for the proposed Bantamsklip power plant and 2 for the associated transmission lines. All 3 EIA’s are running behind the target schedule, with the transmission line EIA’s lagging that for the power station, and there is a strong push for the process to be expedited. The 3 EIA’s for the different power plant sites, however, are to be combined into one EIA as soon as the revised NEMA regulations are promulgated (expected by end November). These new regulations make provision for combining of EIA’s for identical projects at different sites. Once this combining occurs, if the combined EIA results in authorisation of all three sites then Eskom will be able to decide on the order in which installations take place without further public participation processes ,,, the decision will become an internal Eskom management issue. It would appear that, if the 3 EIA’s are combined, the new EIA will have to be subjected to a scoping phase. According to Arcus Gibb, legal argument is being prepared that it will not be necessary to re-open the scoping phase. This may need to be contested.
An attempt is being made by Arcus Gibb to expedite the progress on the transmission line EIA, which was started very late relative to the power plant EIA’s and has some catching up to do. Organisations that are registered as Interested & Affected parties (I&APs) were asked to review a document and 3 proposed transmission line corridors, and to supply comments and proposed alternative corridors to be agreed at a “multistakeholder workshop” on 27th November 2009. I&APs need to note that, should they reach consensus at this workshop or at any subsequent public participation session on a proposed corridor, and the consensus corridor is adopted by Eskom, then the I&Ps involved will effectively be waiving their rights to object and appeal the RoD because they will then be objecting / appealing their own proposal.
