Executive director of the Free Market Foundation, Leon Louw says\u00a0the return of nuclear power run by the current government will be a \u2018catastrophe\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis government has shown conclusively that it is unable to manage electricity \u2026 Nuclear will make the disasters of Medupi and Kusile seem small,\u201d he told The Citizen newspaper.<\/p>\n
Louw says he is not principally opposed to nuclear and sees it as a safe and reliable option. However, he\u2019s concerned about nuclear energy investment remaining in government hands.<\/p>\n
He has also cautioned that it could also be wide open to kickbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way we can have nuclear is to let private investors risk their own money for which we are not responsible. That\u2019s happening worldwide. Pouring government money into it is irresponsible.<\/p>\n
“Taxpayers will end up paying. We are sitting with a dinosaur model, what I\u2019d call an \u2018energy policy for Neanderthals\u2019,\u201d said Louw.<\/p>\n
Estimates for the programme\u2019s costs are around R1 trillion, with output ambitions indicating three nuclear plants will have to be built.<\/p>\n
Louw\u2019s other concern is that nuclear will take far too long to build. He estimates seven years, but in South Africa’s labour climate it could take much longer.<\/p>\n
In his address to Parliament earlier this month, President Jacob Zuma\u00a0said nuclear had the possibility of generating well over 9000MW.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Executive director of the Free Market Foundation, Leon Louw says\u00a0the return of nuclear power run by the current government will be a \u2018catastrophe\u2019. \u201cThis government has shown conclusively that it is unable to manage electricity \u2026 Nuclear will make the disasters of Medupi and Kusile seem small,\u201d he told The Citizen newspaper. Louw says he … Continue reading “SA’s energy policy for Neanderthals, says Free Market Foundation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[9312,4531,4961,9311],"class_list":["post-14458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-and-finance","category-news","tag-kusile","tag-medupi","tag-nuclear-power","tag-sa-energy-policy"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14459,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14458\/revisions\/14459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}