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South Africa's sole nuclear waste management site, Vaalputs, in the Northern Cape, was likely to house high-level waste within the next ten years, the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) said on Wednesday. Speaking at Vaalputs, CEO Rob Adams said that the site currently only dealt with low and intermediate level waste from the Koeberg nuclear power station, in Cape Town. However, South Africa would need a fully operational high-level waste management site by 2070 to deal with spent fuel accumulated at Pelindaba and Koeberg. The high-level waste was currently being stored at underground facilities at Pelindaba and Koeberg, respectively.

Eskom's proposed nuclear power station to be built next to Koeberg could pose a serious threat to residents as the power utility had failed to address a number of concerns such as health risks and an emergency evacuation plan. This was said at a meeting yesterday of the city council's planning and environment portfolio committee (Pepco), which raised a number of concerns about the proposed nuclear station during a discussion on the draft environmental impact report by Eskom. The committee said the report had failed to address issues such as an emergency plan, health risks, nuclear waste, security and economic growth."

Government plans to send the highly-radioactive spent fuel rods stored at the Koeberg nuclear power station overseas for reprocessing, Parliament's minerals and energy portfolio committee heard on Wednesday. This was a short-term solution to disposing of it, in terms of policy approved by Cabinet "but not announced yet", minerals and energy department nuclear safety director Schalk de Waal told MPs.

The cost of the controversial Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project that Eskom wants to build at Koeberg is likely to run well beyond the government's present estimate of R16-billion - and that's without taking into account the cost of dealing with the resulting nuclear waste. So says Kommetjie architect and environmentalist Rod Gurzynski in a scathing critique of the specialist study on the financial aspects of the project.

The new national nuclear policy which the government will reportedly gazette before the end of this month has completely bypassed Parliament and ordinary MPs have not had any input into its formulation, says the opposition DA. It is now asking the Speaker to place the policy on Parliament's agenda. The move coincides with concern by some "interested and affected parties" that they are still not being given enough time to respond to the environmental impact assessment report for the controversial Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) "mini" nuclear demonstration project that Eskom wants to build at Koeberg. The already-extended deadline for comment is Friday.

Scientists heard conflicting views on safety issues around pebble-bed nuclear reactors at an international conference in Washington last week, says the Cape Times. The debate is significant for SA as the country intends to build a demonstration model pebble-bed modular reactor (PBMR) at Koeberg, and 20 to 30 for export. Eskom is attracted to the technology because it sees it as being 'inherently safe' and not needing the expense of a full safety barrier, known as a secondary containment, which other modern reactors have. In June, Rainer Moormann, a scientist who works at Germany's Juelich Research Centre, FZJ, published a report on safety problems with pebble-bed reactors after re-examining the pebble-bed prototype reactor, the AVR, which was shut down in 1988. According to an article in Nucleonics Week, Rainer's findings were 'strongly rebutted' in a presentation by PBMR Ltd, which is 100% owned by Eskom. The PBMR company said Moormann is alone in his findings, and other scientists regard his study as 'flawed'.

South Africa is completing feasibility studies into nuclear fuel production processes and now plans to develop experimental sites, an official at state- owned Nuclear Energy Corp. of SA, or Necsa, said. "We are finishing a range of feasibility studies into aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle," Van Zyl de Villiers, general manager of research and development at Pretoria-based Necsa, said in an interview in Johannesburg today. "The next step for us will be to establish experimental infrastructure." South Africa plans to add to its only existing nuclear plant, Koeberg, to overcome electricity shortages and reduce the country's dependence on coal. While power utility Eskom Holdings Ltd. this year canceled a plan to build the country's second nuclear plant, citing costs, the government said it remained committed to nuclear power.