Cabinet has officially approved the lifting of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) nuclear technology from care and maintenance.

“This decision provides the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) with a legal basis to engage with potential international partners and investors for the revival and further development of the project,” Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said in a post-Cabinet briefing.

The technology was previously advanced by Eskom, until a government decision in 2010 to place the technology into care and maintenance.

This, after the PBMR had failed to secure an anchor customer, or another investment partner, and given an assessment that a further R30-billion would be required to commercialise the technology.

Ntshavheni said the decision would also enable Necsa, which had since been selected to oversee the PBMR, to build on the progress already made and scale the project accordingly.

“The long-term plan is for South Africa to become the leading supplier of small modular reactors (SMRs) to ultimately re-fit decommissioned coal-fired units, and off-grid applications including large power users and smaller grids across Africa,” she added.

The move was signalled by Electricity and Energy Minister Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who had expressed regret at the decision to halt the PBMR programme and who argued that the market for SMRs was being spurred by data-centre investments.

He stressed, however, that the PBMR decision should not be directly linked to the 5 200 MW allocated to nuclear by 2049 in the recently published Integrated Resource Plan 2025.

In a recent presentation to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Electricity and Energy, Necsa listed positioning itself in the development of SMRs as one of six programmes that it intended pursuing.

The other five included: re-establishing the front-end nuclear fuel cycle; extending the life of the Safari-1 research reactor; building a new multipurpose nuclear research reactor to increase radioisotope production; beneficiating fluorochemicals; and capacitating and strengthening skills development for the nuclear industry.