S Africa to create extra space for nuclear waste

Radioactive waste storage facilities at South Africa’s nuclear power station Koeberg will fill up next year, the power utility Eskom said Tuesday, adding it has begun creating extra space.

South Africa is the only country on the continent with a civilian nuclear industry, and its two reactors have been in service for more than 30 years.

The Koeberg nuclear power plant, located outside Cape Town, produces 1,860 megawatts contributing about four percent of the national power output.

Eskom in a statement that its “spent fuel pools are essentially full in 2020 and for this reason a project was initiated to create additional space”.

It said it would start to transfer “some of the used fuel” to dry storage casks.

The casks have already been procured and “are currently on site” and Eskom said it was “in the process of preparing to transfer used fuel from the... pools into these casks”.

Eskom said it opted for the dry storage solution as it is widely used in the nuclear industry across the world.

“Koeberg is the only nuclear power plant in Africa, and hence the option of a centralised wet storage repository is also not financially viable, nor is it technically viable to increase the size and storage capacity of the Koeberg spent fuel pools,” it said.