3 Oct (NucNet): South Africa will sign strategic cooperation agreements with nuclear vendors and countries to start the rollout of a nuclear new build programme, the South Africa Department of Energy has said in a statement.
The agreements will set out potential frameworks of cooperation for each vendor or country on how they can take part in a new build programme that could see the construction of up to 9.6 gigawatts of new nuclear, the statement said.
The agreements will mark the beginning of the preparatory stage for the procurement process.
The statement said the government is committed to ensuring the nuclear new build programme is undertaken in a fair, competitive and cost effective manner.
It said details of the agreements will only be shared once they have all been signed in order to protect “proprietary information shared in confidence”.
On 22 September 2014, South Africa signed an inter-governmental agreement with Russia that laid the foundations for the construction of up to eight Russian-supplied nuclear units in South Africa..
South Africa has two commercially operational nuclear units at the Koeberg nuclear station. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the units account for about five percent of the country’s generated electricity
