Comment invited on nuclear sites

THE Notice of Eskom’s applications for the two nuclear power station sites have been gazetted, with calls for public comment.

The application for the Thyspunt site near Humansdorp, in the Kouga municipality in the Eastern Cape, was gazetted on Monday, and the application for the Duynefontyn site near Koeberg outside Cape Town in the Western Cape was gazetted on July 29.

The notices were in the provincial government gazettes.

Both sites are now in municipalities controlled by the DA.

The short notices indicate only that Eskom has applied to the National Nuclear Regulator for nuclear installation site licences for Thyspunt and Duynefontyn.

Both notices provide for public representations in writing to the board of the National Nuclear Regulator for 30 days from the date of each notice.

“Written comments received after the closing date will not be considered,” said the notices.

Duynefontyn is about 25km north of Cape Town and is an existing nuclear site, where the Koeberg nuclear power station is situated.

Eskom made both applications to the regulator in March.

Yesterday the regulator’s spokesman, Gino Moonsamy, said the licence applications had been checked and passed by the regulator from an administrative perspective, which was why they were now being gazetted.

The public comment sought now was to get a feeling of public opinion – “very generic comment” rather than detailed comment, said Moonsamy.

After this stage, public hearings would be held, which would take longer, possibly months. The public hearings would look at the safety case for the reactors.

The regulator would require Eskom to produce a public information pack for the public hearings.

Document

“That public information document will be made available in the public domain, and whoever wants to make representation needs to use that document, which has substantial information,” said Moonsamy.

In March, after the applications were made, the regulator said that both applications were to “construct and operate multiple nuclear installations (power reactors) and associated auxiliary nuclear installations of a plant type and technology not yet identified”.

The regulator said in March that it would review the applications to check for compliance and whether they should be accepted for further technical assessments and public comment, and promised that further developments like the site licence applications would be be published in the Government Gazette.

Last week Eskom also gazetted a notice about its application to the regulator for a non-nuclear powered vessel to dock in Cape Town sometime from November 1 to 30, bringing nuclear fuel to replenish Koeberg.