Dr. Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, recently disclosed that South Africa plans to develop its nuclear capacity to address its electricity concerns.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the Cabinet Lekgotla held in Tshwane during the weekend, as reported by the SA news agency, the minister noted that the country would build a nuclear plant for electricity generation at “a scale and speed that we can afford.”
“In the long term, we need to ensure that we anchor the baseload and nuclear is an important part of that intervention. We are working on the framework for procurement because we don’t want to discredit the process through a procurement process that is not transparent. We will do it at the scale and speed that we can afford as a country,” he said.
“The poor and those that are located in the townships are finding it exceptionally difficult to afford the increases in electricity. The pricing and the tariff is prohibitive and a lot of our people across the length and breadth of the country are not in a position to afford electricity,” he added, raising concerns about the power challenges poorer communities face.
“Those are challenges on the distribution side…and we know that over a period of time, municipalities have underinvested in the maintenance, replenishment, and protection of the distribution grid and of course, we are paying the price now,” the minister stated.
In March 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa created a new cabinet office and named Kgosientsho Ramokgopa as Minister of Electricity and Energy to address the country’s persistent energy issue.
The recovery plan that was initiated in March 2023 and the “aggressive” maintenance of the company’s power plants are credited for this accomplishment.
According to a report by Bloomberg, Eskom’s failure to satisfy energy demand last year was caused by record outages stemming from mismanagement, corruption, and the company’s aging fleet of producing plants.
