Societal wellbeing organisations the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (Safcei) and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg have expressed their concern about the South African government pushing for more nuclear energy, while renewables wait in the wings.

The two organisations took the government to court in 2017 over what it deemed an unconstitutional R1-trillion nuclear deal with Russia.

Safcei executive director Francesca de Gasparis says the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy seems single-minded on touting nuclear energy as the solution to the country’s energy crisis.

She motivates this by pointing to recent developments – the National Energy Regulator of South Africa being due to concur with the Minister’s Determination to start procurement processes for 2 500 MW of new nuclear energy generation capacity; and Eskom seeking a site licence from the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) for Thyspunt to host a nuclear power station.

Earthlife director Makoma Lekalakala claims that, “based on poorly organised public hearings organised by the NNR, it is clear that government is not committed to meaningful engagement with the public”.

This while some of the key issues raised by communities around Thyspunt relate to the lack of meaningful participation in the matter.

She believes public hearings have become a box-ticking exercise, rather than an opportunity to better understand the implications and potential impacts of building infrastructure of this nature.

Lekalakala says that, as nuclear power plants require huge subsidies, which will divert resources away from other social needs, the public needs to be given an opportunity to weigh in on these far-reaching decisions.

The organisations believe government should have learned its lesson in 2017 about the importance of meaningful public participation.

Safcei and Earthlife agree that there are safer and cheaper options to nuclear energy, and that can be brought online quicker, while solving country's energy problems without plunging the economy into further debt.