What's wrong with Koeberg?
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Koeberg is often critisised by those afraid of a leak of radioactive material, but in reality Koeberg and Eskom management have come up with many innovative solutions and explanations in response to the problems they have encountered.
Just because the Western Cape is one of two provinces having a hydroelectric plant, the only province to have a nuclear power plant, and is also connected to the National grid via redundant connections, that is no reason not to consider, for example. a 6 hour province wide power blackout quite normal. It is certainly no reflection on the competence of Eskom management, as some have unfairly dared to suggest!
Some examples of the innovative thinking for which Koeberg management is justifiably famous:
Problem | Background | Innovative solution |
No
idea what to do with spent fuel rods | When nuclear fuel rods start to lose their potency, they still produce heat, but not enough to be useful in the generator. These rods need to be stored, and kept cool. The original design plans included a temporary holding pond for these rods to be stored in water before being transferred to a nuclear waste handling facility. There is no such waste handling facility in the country. | The team decided to simply keep all the fuel rods right there at Koeberg! When then holding ponds got full, the racks were modified to allow double the number of rods to fit into the same ponds. Its very likely that the original design had a wide margin of safety, and so the racks were also modified a second time, and now hold three times the number of rods than in the original design! |
Embarrassing province wide 6 hour power blackout | In 2006 a large area of the Western Cape was subject to a complete power blackout. Eskom took six hours to restore power, and over the following weeks there were rolling power blackouts. | Blame a veld fire |
A loose bolt falls off | In 2006, a loose bolt in one of the main turbines fell off and damaged the turbine, for which a replacement needed to be shipped from Europe. The likely reason is sloppy application of procedures. | Accuse someone of 'sabotage', and/or blame the apartheid era government. |
Accidentally
hand internal documents to legal opponents Earthlife Africa. | In 2005 Earthlife Africa successfully sought a court ruling that the EIA done on the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) was invalid. Earthlife Africa demanded relevant documents, which Eskom delayed as long as legally possible. When Eskom's attorney eventually handed over the documents, she accidentally included a whole lot of other papers, including a study showing the PBMR project was not commercially viable, and recommending Eskom 'dilute' its share. The documents also revealed that Eskom's foreign financial partners in the PBMR were dropping out faster than canaries in a reactor core. | Sue Earthlife
Africa for the return of the documents. Also obtain an apartheid era style gag
order from the court preventing the public from seeing this information. Simple, direct, and brilliant! Not even a denial needed to be issued. |
Questions
around transport safety | Currently the low and medium level radioactive waste produced by Koeberg is put on a truck and driven to Vaalplats. Questions have been asked about the risk of leakage and contamination of the air or land in the case of a road accident involving the truck. Koeberg had no sufficiently detailed plan to cater for this not unlikely eventuality. | Give truck driver a cell phone,
and asked him to SMS head office when he gets there safely. Once again simple... really simple. |
Citizen
points out radioactive leak at Pelindaba | Wandering
around Pelinda, a citizen with a geiger counter noticed a dangerious level of
radioactivity coming from a leaking calibration radioactive source. Children were
playing in the near vicinity. The citizen, somewhat concerned, raised an alarm. | Do not bring undue attention to the concerned citizen by thanking them. Otherwise next thing everyone might pointing out little leaks here and there! Rather accuse citizen of causing 'unecessary panic', and get the president to threaten a to push through a new law making this illegal. Now thats responding to the problem at the highest level! |