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Creamer Media's Chanel de Bruyn speaks to Engineering News Editor Terence Creamer about the consultations that are under way regarding Eskom's next revenue application; the National Energy Regulator of South Africa having to deliberate on the Retail Tariff Plan submitted by Eskom; and the ongoing consultations regarding a new pricing methodology for the electricity supply industry.

State-owned defence company Denel has announced it will institutionalise and implement a new turnaround plan to effect a self-sustaining business.

The plan is particularly focused on streamlining the company, growing its order pipeline and accessing new revenue streams.

Chief restructuring officer Riaz Salojee said during a media briefing on August 11 that the plan has the support of the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) and the Denel board, and will be strengthened through a formalised memorandum of cooperation with the Department of Defence (Dof) and its arms procurement agency the Armaments Corporation of South Africa, to ensure alignment on sovereign and strategic capabilities.

Denel was a stable State-owned enterprise between 2010 and 2015, but started showing signs of financial distress in 2016/17, partly owing to State capture and emerging weaknesses in management, leadership, project execution and contract management.

The company’s revenue had fallen from a peak of R8.2-billion in 2015/16 to under R2-billion in 2021/22.

It also has not helped that the South African defence budget spend in relation to gross domestic product (GDP) has been declining for a number of years down to 0.7%. This compares with the world’s average spend on defence as a percentage of GDP, which sits at about 2%.

Salojee believes Denel can start being self-sustaining with an order book of R12-billion and reach a complete turnaround and solid revenue generation with an order book of R30-billion.

The current Denel business model, however, remains materially lossmaking, but some improvements can be made on the execution of current orders, among other efforts.

The turnaround plan is premised on six elements – reducing costs and improving performance; engaging staff who are performance oriented; increasing the customer base; implementing an effective supply chain, which relates to procurement processes and contract management, as well as optimal stock levels; optimising planning and production; and establishing key partnerships and joint ventures.

Responding to whether Denel will be asking for turnaround capital from the fiscus, interim chairperson Gloria Serobe said it would first seek to raise funds by selling noncore assets and reducing its cost base wherever possible.

However, Denel has submitted a recapitalisation application to the National Treasury through the DPE, to address the company’s legacy debt and introduce liquidity.

When asked whether retrenchments were in store, Serobe affirmed that Denel would follow the necessary consultative and legal processes before embarking on such action.

She added that the turnaround plan was not meant to negatively impact employees.

Salojee said the strategic intent of Denel was to reduce dependence on the fiscus. Rather, a rationalised Denel would focus on its proven capabilities in the fields of guided weapons, land defence systems, aircraft engineering and maintenance and the delivery of complex integrated systems for the security and cyber-environments.

However, the problem at the moment was the fixed cost of the business being far in excess of revenue and executable business.

The company will now focus on achieving higher levels of efficiency by adopting a smaller geographic footprint and streamlining policies and processes, including on engineering, manufacturing and the support environment.

“We intend to grow long-term strategic partnerships with the local defence and technology sectors, and entrench our position once again in the local and international markets,” Salojee said.

He noted that there remained a significant interest in Denel’s battle-proven intellectual property, adding that the rapidly changing global defence environment would create opportunities to market the company’s products.

The “reset” of the company will be done in three stages: stabilisation, which is based on current revenues, obligations and reduced infrastructure; followed by sustainability, which will be based on exp...

The City of Cape Town will this month start construction of two new MyCiTi bus depots.

The R340-million project forms part of the roll-out of the MyCiTi service to Mitchells Plain, Khayelitsha, Claremont and Wynberg.

It is estimated that 145 buses will be operating from each one of the depots, making it 290 buses in total.

However, this number may increase over time, depending on future demand for the service, City of Cape Town Urban Mobility MMC Rob Quintas tells Engineering News Online.

“The roll-out of the service to Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha will be undertaken in phases, as infrastructure becomes available and the necessary operating contracts are put in place,” he notes.

“The first buses, although not on dedicated red busways, are expected to operate by mid-2025, if all goes as planned and if there are no delays, as part of the earlier operational milestone dates servicing the Nyanga/Central Business District route and the Wynberg/Claremont to Khayelitsha/Mitchells Plain route.”

The two new bus depots will be built on a 15 ha piece of land on the corner of Mew Way and Spine road, situated between Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha.

The first construction work will be visible by mid-August.

“The city's expenditure on the roll-out of the MyCiTi service to the south east is the biggest financial investment in public transport by any metro city to date,” says City of Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.

“With the expansion of the MyCiTi service, we will be bringing more MyCiTi routes to Mitchells Plain and Khayelitsha to connect commuters with Claremont and Wynberg.

“This is a mammoth undertaking and we are doing it in phases,” says Hill-Lewis.

“Residents from these areas will see new infrastructure being built in the coming 36 months, be it the widening of roads, MyCiTi stations and stops, and depots needed to operate the service.

“I am proud to say that the new bus depots will be state-of-the-art facilities, designed to use our scarce and limited resources to maximum benefit,” notes Hill-Lewis.

The depot buildings will be orientated and shaped in response to the sun's direction, while it will also utilise saw-tooth roofs to channel reflective light into the interior to minimise the need for artificial light.

Motion sensors will be linked to all internal lighting to keep electricity use to a minimum.

The orientation of the buildings will also limit the need for air conditioning, making the buildings more energy efficient.

“As for water, we estimate that up to 80% of the water to be used at the bus washing facility will be recycled,” explains Hill-Lewis.

“We will harvest rain water from the roofs, and install water-wise toilets with water flow control.”

Sustainable urban drainage systems in the form of permeable paving have also been incorporated at the large bus staging areas to allow for the replenishment of the underground water table.

Local Benefits

Quintas notes that local residents and subcontractors from the surrounding communities are set to benefit from the 32-month-long depot construction projects, through temporary employment opportunities and contracts.

“Temporary employment and training opportunities to the value of at least R22-million will be available to local jobseekers.

“Also, the contract between the city and the construction company stipulates that local subcontractors should be contracted to supply goods and services to the value of R40.8-million.

“Thus, our local communities will have the opportunity to earn an income while this construction project is ongoing, and hopefully this injection will give them a foothold in the market,” says Quintas.

The bus depots are set to provide a secure site where buses can be held while not operating; office administration facilities for the bus operating companies; facilities for drivers to rest and eat between shifts; as well as the infrastructure required for maintenance, refuelling and washing.

Municipal utilities and distributors will have to "provide more than one product" and will have to develop new services and business models to effectively serve the market, such as by reselling and wheeling power between producers and consumers.

These are some of the views presented during the first in a series of webinars jointly hosted by municipal organisation the Association of Municipal Electricity Utilities (AMEU) and industry organisation the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) on August 10 to prepare South Africa's energy utilities for the changes and disruptions, experienced worldwide, in the energy industry.

"The current electricity distribution system in South Africa is no longer fit for purpose to provide sustainable, reliable power. Most energy systems work in an inflexible hub-and-spoke model, but growing renewable power, which is not dispatchable unless there is also affordable energy storage, is driving change," said AMEU strategic adviser Vally Padayachee.

The way energy was used was also changing, as was the pattern of demand and supply, and the near-instant movement of energy made it extremely difficult to control from a distribution perspective. To avoid blackouts, there was a need to drastically improve the architecture of the system, he added during the 'Digital Municipal Distribution Utility of the Future' webinar.

A study by US education institution the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed that, with more distributed energy technologies, flexible demand is coming into the landscape and, in many cases, so are resources. Ubiquitous information and communications technology systems will also be needed.

South Africa's municipal utilities and State-owned Eskom would have to accommodate these changes, especially to prevail in the face of the current electricity crisis, Padayachee said.

"The power sector is in the midst of a transformation, hence the need for future-proofing. The power system is becoming more distributed and digitalised, and the resource mix is becoming more renewable and more integrated with other key sectors," he noted.

Key success factors for utilities to provide services in the changing market include grid modernisation and adaptation to distributed energy resources, as well as the customer-centric evolution of the utilities.

Flexible generation would also be important, as would new business models, underpinned by digitalisation, Padayachee highlighted.

Flexible technologies would be focused on demand-side response, including flexible generation. Further, resilience and energy storage would play a greater role in future-proof utilities, he added.

Meanwhile, the distribution sector was key to the transformation of the energy system and must take into consideration how distribution businesses must adapt and what shape a distribution business in the future would take, said Eskom Distribution senior manager Malcolm van Harte.

"Key to the digital revolution is that data is king and the question is how to use data to transform for the new energy ecosystem," he said.

Data will enable utilities to make better decisions and includes a large range of data, not only from utilities' equipment, but also from the broader market, to manage an electricity network more effectively.

Similarly, there would be greater demand for data to manage virtual power stations, which were used as aggregated models for distributed generation, as power would be sourced from different locations, he added.

"The intermittency of power sources poses a challenge to the distribution side of the energy system. There must be interoperability of multiple assets on the system and flexible resources and services. This means the amount of data consumed will be significant and how it is used will be critical for the distribution industry," Van Harte noted.

Similarly, digital systems in the distribution industry will need to enable remote engineering, corporate governance and customer choice, as well as b...

The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) says it has not approved an increase in the maximum price of pipeline gas to R133/GJ and insists that it “would not approve any increase which doubles its previously approved maximum gas price” of R68.39/GJ.

It also insists that only Sasol Gas, which has confirmed that the 96% hike became effective from August 1, could respond to questions regarding the basis for the increase.

Sasol Gas has indicated that it informed both Nersa and its customers that the price of piped gas sold in South Africa would increase to R133.34/GJ from the start of August.

The company says it submitted the revised price to Nersa on May 29 together with a request that the regulator confirm that the price was in compliance with the 2021 Nersa Maximum Gas Price decision.

“In its efforts to confirm its compliance, Sasol Gas also engaged with Nersa on several occasions after this submission,” the company tells Engineering News.

Sasol says it has noted a media statement released by Nersa on August 4, in which the regulator states that it has not approved the “excessive increases in gas prices that have been announced by one of its licensees”.

However, the JSE-listed group insists that the price increase is compliant with Nersa’s 2021 decision and has been determined using the approved calculation methodology prescribed in that decision.

“Applying this approved adjustment method yields a maximum gas price of R273.43/GJ,” Sasol reports, adding that it did not pursue such an increase, owing to the negative implications for its customers.

However, Nersa says the maximum price arising from its application of the methodology is “well below R100/GJ”, against which Sasol Gas is then expected to provide a discount in line with objectives stipulated in Section 22 of the Gas Act, of 2001.

Nersa also insists that any increase above the R68.39/GJ approved is “tantamount to setting a new gas price” that is excessive, as only the Energy Regulator is permitted to approve maximum gas prices.

The 2021 decision, Nersa asserts, was influenced by competitive market conditions that prevailed at the time, which it acknowledged pre-dated the subsequent international price shocks.

It adds that the decision was subjected to a rationality test, wherein costs were considered. “Nersa has no information of gas costs that increased by 96% which justify a corresponding increase in the price.”

However, while the Industrial Gas Users Association of Southern Africa (IGUA-SA) has been calling for a cost-based methodology, the current methodology is based on a benchmark of international gas prices associated with the US Henry Hub, the Dutch Title Transfer Facility and the UK National Balancing Point.

Nevertheless, the regulator tells Engineering News that it is considering various options including:

a new maximum price subjected to a rationality test prescribed in its methodology;

an adjustment factor that is cost reflective;

a legal route which seeks to set aside part of its decision and remit it to Nersa;

an investigation and adjudication over excessive or unreasonable gas price increases.

No timeframe was provide for the selection and implementation of the options under consideration.

In the meantime, the IGUA-SA has described the hike as “untenable” and has warned of possible manufacturing cutbacks, as well as potential increases in those essential foodstuffs produced using gas.

IGUA-SA calculates the hike will cost the South African economy R325-million a month and, thus, poses a risk to an already struggling and weakened South African economy.

“On the one hand, businesses are facing closure across the manufacturing sector, whilst on the other hand it would appear that the gas industry is heading for a regulatory void from a Nersa gas-pricing perspective,” CEO Jaco Human says.

He has called for an unambiguous response from Nersa, including the adoption of a methodology that uses Sasol’s cost base as the main reference point for setti...

South Africa’s Central Energy Fund (CEF) has completed its due diligence on its R1-billion investment in emerging integrated energy producer Renergen’s Virginia gas project.

Marking a major step towards finalising the agreement between Renergen and the CEF, both parties have now started engaging with their respective stakeholders to obtain final approvals to complete the transaction.

Renergen CEO Stefano Marani says the successful conclusion of the due diligence “signifies the strategic nature of the Virginia gas project and further marks another significant step forward in closing out the capital required for Phase 2 operations at Virginia”.

He adds that the CEF’s involvement in the project brings with it “a wealth of experience” in upstream oil and gas exploration, midstream natural gas to liquids processing and large-scale pipeline operations and maintenance experience.

“This will all assist in bringing a new and critical source of energy online, at a time where South Africa is suffering a significant energy crisis,” Marani notes.

Commenting on the commissioning progress of Virginia ahead of the start of Phase 1 operations, Marani says that turning the plant for Phase 1 operations on is “a function of coordinating all the sites to turn on simultaneously, and importantly, the relevant teams are ensuring that all aspects of the operation will run according to design”.

“We have no intention of rushing the process at this late stage and introducing risk. Since starting construction at Virginia prior to Covid, the total delays experienced in the context of several global macro events of the past two years could have been significantly worse had we not implemented several mitigations to reduce the overall impact on the project,” he adds, referencing the project’s delays over the past few years.

US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) believes it is well positioned to feed projects into the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), which was established between South Africa and several developed countries, including the US, in 2020, and which is expected to progress towards implementation later this year.

The JETP includes an initial offer of $8.5-billion – to be provided by France, Germany, the US, the UK and the European Union – to help fund South Africa’s transition from coal to renewables, while protecting workers and communities reliant on the coal value chain.

South Africa is currently working on an investment plan that will be made up primarily of projects in the electricity sector, but which will also include some electric vehicle and green hydrogen projects. The plan is expected to be approved ahead of the upcoming COP27 climate conference to be held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November.

USTDA director Enoh Ebong tells Engineering News that the agency’s activities in South Africa, as well as the rest of the continent, are already largely aligned with the JETP, with feasibility studies being pursued, or technical support being provided, for renewable energy, smart-grid and battery storage projects in several countries.

“So, we are well situated to feed projects into the initiative, with the view to mobilising some of that financing,” Ebong said during an interview in South Africa that coincided with a visit to the country by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

In addresses made during his visit, Blinken emphasised the role that infrastructure could play in advancing the President Joe Biden administration’s new Africa strategy.

Blinken said the US was committed to raising $200-billion towards the G7’s $600-billion ‘Partnership for Global Infrastructure’ and that it was already implementing projects that were focused on health, digital infrastructure, empowering women and girls, energy, and climate.

“The way this infrastructure is built will reverberate for decades.

“After all, we’ve seen the consequences when international infrastructure deals are corrupt and coercive, when they’re poorly built or environmentally destructive, when they import or abuse workers, or burden countries with crushing debts.

“That’s why it’s so important for countries to have choices, to be able to weigh them transparently, with the input of local communities without pressure or coercion,” Blinken said in an address made in Pretoria in which he outlined the US’s new African strategy.

Ebong met with the leadership of Eskom during her visit and confirmed that much of the discussion had focused on ways that American companies could support the management of South Africa’s transmission infrastructure, including through the use of artificial intelligence.

The issue of clean energy, as well as transport and digital infrastructure, also featured prominently during the US-South Africa Strategic Dialogue, which was reconvened in Pretoria on August 8 for the first time since 2015 and which attracted over 50 US policymakers and officials.

Ebong co-chaired a session on infrastructure with Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who is head of the Investment and Infrastructure Office in the Presidency.

The issue of protecting the physical assets of the South African rail industry featured prominently along with the development of an inclusive digital infrastructure.

Ebong indicated that the discussions were likely to stimulate future feasibility studies that the USTDA would fund to improve the portfolio of bankable projects in South Africa and into which American firms are likely to bid to provide goods and services.

“I think that South Africans should look to more projects being announced and grants signed as a result of these discussions.”

The agency spends about $24-million yearly in Africa to support feasibility studies, to provide technical assistance and to conduct reverse trade missions, with a green-hydrogen focused mission to be hosted in the US...

The Industrial Gas Users Association of Southern Africa (IGUA-SA) has described as “untenable” a 96% hike in the gas price by Sasol and has called on the energy regulator to intervene urgently to address what it describes as Sasol’s monopolistic behaviour, as well as to prevent manufacturing cutbacks and socioeconomic distress.

Sasol confirms that the price of piped gas sold to its South African customers has been increased to R133.34/GJ, effective from August 1, but insists that it has shown restraint in holding back from applying the maximum price allowed under the prevailing methodology for setting domestic gas prices.

“This gas price was determined using the approved calculation methodology prescribed in the 2021 National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) Maximum Gas Price Decision for Sasol Gas.

“Applying this approved adjustment method yields a maximum gas price of R273.43/GJ,” Sasol tells Engineering News.

The price change, Sasol adds, reflects the cyclical nature of gas and other commodity prices’ response to inflationary pressures on operating costs, an increase in gas exploration and development activities and funding requirements to ensure security of supply.

However, IGUA-SA CEO Jaco Human warns that the hike is set to cost the South African economy R325-million a month and could trigger both manufacturing cutbacks and retail price hikes.

He notes that industry members reliant on gas energy to produce bread and other foodstuffs will have little choice but to significantly increase prices, exacerbating an already intensifying cost-of-living crisis.

“Gas energy price increases of 96% are untenable and pose a significant risk to an already struggling and weakened South African economy.

“On the one hand, businesses are facing closure across the manufacturing sector, whilst on the other hand it would appear that the gas industry is heading for a regulatory void from a Nersa gas-pricing perspective,” Human adds.

IGUA-SA has been at loggerheads with Nersa over the gas-price methodology for years and in December last year lodged an application in the Gauteng division of the High Court challenging Nersa’s 2021 approval of Sasol Gas’ maximum gas prices.

At the time, the industry body warned that gas prices could rise by 220% by August, from R68/GJ rising to more than R217/GJ.

IGUA-SA has also made repeated call for Nersa to adopt a methodology that uses Sasol’s cost base as the main reference point for setting the price.

In 2019, the Constitutional Court declared a previous maximum-price formula – calculated using a reference basket of alternative fuels – to be irrational and unlawful. Nersa then adopted a new formula, which uses a benchmark of international gas prices associated with the US Henry Hub, the Dutch Title Transfer Facility and the UK National Balancing Point.

However, IGUA-SA argues that the new formula is yielding an outcome that is even higher than those that emerged from the alternative-fuels basket, and well above those that prevailed during the decade-long “grace period” from 2004 to 2014, when Sasol Gas was regarded as an “unconstrained monopolist”.

Human called for an unambiguous response form Nersa which, on August 4, noted that it had not approved Sasol’s hike and that it would investigate any possible unreasonable or excessive pricing cases.

“Sasol’s unilateral implementation of a 96% gas price increase further confirms its actions as a monopolist.

“Nersa cannot simply hope and expect Sasol, as a monopolist, to act as a free-market player and price gas at competitive market levels,” Human argues.

However, Sasol says the revised price was submitted to Nersa by Sasol Gas on May 29, together with a request to confirm that the price was in compliance with the 2021 Maximum Gas Price decision.

“In its efforts to confirm its compliance, Sasol Gas also engaged with Nersa on several occasions after this submission,” the JSE-listed company says, adding that it believes the piped-gas price being impleme...

Following the August 7 launch of the South African National Roads Agency Limited- (Sanral-) led Vala Zonke programme, which aims to tackle the thousands of potholes on roads across the country, Sanral engineering executive Louw Kannemeyer has told Engineering News the hope is to deal with most of the existing potholes within six months.

“The immediate focus is the repair of open potholes, because that is what is damaging tyres, rims and causing accidents. We are hoping to move into the preventive maintenance phase in six months from now,” he added on August 8.

The preventive maintenance phase would involve maintaining and controlling roadside vegetation and clearing drainage systems to prevent flooding, as well as sealing cracks before water can get in and applying diluted emulsions across the road surfaces to waterproof them better.

“We are starting with potholes, but the long-term aim is to drive effective preventive maintenance at all authority levels,” he explained.

At the launch of the programme, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula appealed to provinces, municipalities, the private sector and the general public to support the campaign, which will also be known as operation Kwala Kaofela in Sesotho – which roughly translates to “close them all”.

The campaign to fix potholes, which was launched on the R57 in the Emfuleni local municipality in the south of Johannesburg, will be led by Sanral, acting as an agency of the Department of Transport (DoT). Sanral will be working closely with provincial and municipal roads departments to roll out the programme, which will be enabled through a mobile phone application (app) that will allow members of the public to report potholes.

Kannemeyer explained that Sanral was leading the programme because it already had the technology in place. With some minor adjustments to the coding for a negligible cost, the existing Sanral pothole reporting app could be tweaked to include reporting capabilities for municipal roads as well.

Most open potholes are found on municipal and provincial roads, while national roads managed by Sanral remain largely pothole free because of Sanral's policy of fixing reported potholes within 48 hours. This is enabled by Sanral’s app, which will now be rolled out on provincial and municipal levels to hopefully achieve the same results.

“This is an important campaign that will make a huge difference in the lives of many South Africans. It will change the face of our municipal and provincial roads from pothole-riddled to an acceptable state of repair. This launch will be replicated across the country with Premiers and MECs leading provincial launches in all nine provinces,” Mbalula said.

He added that “the reality of potholes hit home” for him when he undertook an inspection of the N12, in Wolmaransstad, in the North West province earlier this year.

“This is the reality of many communities in all our provinces. The bad roads, caused mainly by potholes, are one of the major hindrances to economic growth,” he said.

He also said service delivery was often hampered by corruption.

“Corruption not only eats into the social fibre of our society, but it also impacts on the integrity of the work that government does to deliver services . . . Often, the money is spent and the work is not done, but some civil servant or politician has become rich. To prevent corruption, operation Vala Zonke must contain consequence management measures. Where there is corruption, it must be dealt with decisively,” Mbalula said.

He noted that the maintenance challenges and backlog in South Africa’s road network had to start with putting measures in place that would halt the deterioration of the country’s roads.

“Attending to potholes as soon as possible after they occur is the most effective way to arrest this decline,” he said.

The Vala Zonke app will work in conjunction with Sanral’s pothole management app and will allow the public to raise any issues, upload pictures of potholes, and provide a r...

State-owned electricity utility Eskom has confirmed that Unit 2 at the Koeberg nuclear power station was returned to service at 20:24 on Sunday, August 7.

“The unit is currently loading and will require about ten days to reach full output,” spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha confirmed in an emailed response to an Engineering News enquiry.

The 920-MW unit was shut for refuelling and extended maintenance on January 18 and was initially scheduled to return to service in June.

The extended maintenance was also meant to have included the replacement of three steam generators, but the replacement was deferred to August 2023 following an assessment, conducted together with Framatome, which concluded that Eskom was not ready to implement the project.

The deferral did not lead to any shortening in the duration of the outage, despite the fact that it accounted for one stage of load-shedding every time the utility has resorted to rotational power cuts since January.

The outage coincided with the most intensive period yet for load-shedding, with Eskom having even resorted to Stage 6 cuts during a wildcat strike in late June and early July, which affected a number of its coal stations.

Despite the smaller scope of the shutdown, the date for returning Unit 2 to service was initially shifted to mid-July, then the end of July and finally into August.

The steam generator replacement (SGR) programme is also key to Eskom securing a Long-Term Operations licence from the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) to extend the life of the plant by a further 20 years. The licence is currently due to expire in July 2024.

The application to extend the operational life was submitted by Eskom on May 10, 2021, and accepted by the NNR for further processing on August 17, 2021. On July 26 this year, the NNR confirmed that Eskom had submitted the safety case in support of its application to extend Koeberg’s operational life.

The replacement of the Unit 1 steam generators, meanwhile, is still planned to take place during the unit’s upcoming extended maintenance, scheduled for December. However, concerns have already been raised about Eskom’s readiness for that outage.

These concerns coincide with major changes to the leadership at Koeberg, with Eskom announcing in early July that Mahesh Valaitham would act as Koeberg power station GM, owing to the fact that the current acting GM, Nomawethu Mtwebana, had been selected to join the World Association of Nuclear Operators, which is based in the US, as a reverse loanee for the next year.

In addition, Eskom chief nuclear officer Riedewaan Barkadien departed the organisation at the end of July, with Keith Featherstone acting in the position while a recruitment process was undertaken.

COO Jan Oberholzer has stated previously that the deferral of the Unit 2 SGR programme was “not ideal”, as it would not take place close to the expiry of the unit’s licence.

“[The delays have] unfortunately created a situation that we are cramping what needs to happen for the long-term operation of Koeberg right until the end, and that means that the risk obviously is increased.”