The Anti-Nuclear Activists in South Africa

Read their work for good therapy

For good therapy I like reading the work of anti-nuclear activists. For international audiences, they can be found on websites such as counterpunch, and the list of think tanks that they cross quote (that receive in around $1.2billion per year in donations) are listed at the Capital Research Center thanks to the excellent work of Ken Braun.

Here is an article that is written by South Africa’s local activists that include the usual suspects, Koeberg Alert Alliance, the Southern African Faith Communities' Environment Institute, and Earthlife Africa. As usual their own claims don’t stand up to scrutiny.

They’re talking about a "ballooning cost” of R10 billion ($0.5 billion), that was spent on the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), the world’s first attempt at a commercial helium cooled Small Modular Reactor. As it turns out the amount of money that South Africa spent over a 10 year period is less than what all the anti nuclear activists worldwide get on a yearly basis. In fairness to their argument, the PBMR did require more money that estimates put at around R10 billion for another decade until the project’s final completion.

But had the Zuma administration, and the Minister Barbara Hogan in particular, not abruptly cut the funding at the time, then the PBMR would have hit full commercialisation by now, and South Africa would have been leading the world in offering a commercial solution for base load decarbonisation.

• How does the R10 billion compare to other sources of electricity generation?

• The amount of money that Eskom spends on diesel per year (R20 billion in 2023)?

• The newly build coal power stations like Medupi (R145 billion) and Kusile (R165 billion)?

• Or the amount that we have spent on renewables (just R8.5 billion in 2022)?

Anti-nuclear activists never check their own numbers, because it will expose how silly they really look.