The intention is that the second briefing will take place after the finalisation of South Africa’s Integrated Resource Plan 2010 (IRP 2010), which was issued in draft form earlier this month. Although the period for comment on the IRP2010 is likely to be extended, government still wants it to be finalised before the end of the year.
The IRP2010 identifies the country’s power generation options for the next 20 years. One of these is nuclear, and Russia wants to be one of the bidders for South Africa’s next nuclear power plant.
The Russian nuclear industry learned a great deal from the Chernobyl catastrophe in the Ukraine in the then Soviet Union, in 1986. As a result, modern Russian nuclear power reactors have multiple protection systems.
Since then, the Russians have focused their attention, like France and the US, on pressurised water reactors (PWRs) – abbreviated as VVER in Russian. According to the US Energy Information Administration, an American government agency, today’s VVER designs “conform to international standards”.
Russia is offering South Africa the latest generation of its VVER-1000 reactor in the AES-91/99 nuclear power plant design. (The Russians have separate designations for reactors and for the nuclear power plants). In 2003, the AES-91/99 design (including the reactor) was certified as complying with European Union standards by Finnish experts. The AES-91/99 uses the latest version – V-466 – of the VVER-1000 reactor (VVER-1000/466 for short). But other options are available. More at:
http://www.pimagazine-asia.com/index.php?page=shownews&news=2828
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