Yzerfontein

In my view, the electricity shortage is the single biggest hindrance to economic growth in Cape Town, and I follow the saga avidly.

This blog contains is an adapted version of a blogversation I had with Sweet Violet (a great blog) who's hubby is a Koeberg Nuclear Power Station expert - it's a great resource for anybody interested in the Eskomgate saga.

Sweet_Violet Monday 27 February 2006 7:05 PM OK...here's what I know...and if you have more questions, please let me know and I'll ask Hubby (if he ever gets home...he worked all weekend and has put in 2 hrs OT today).The Nuclear Regulator determines how much power can be carried to Koeberg from outside sources. The maximum allowed is 2900KW: Cape Town needs between 3400KW and 3900KW. When both Units 1 and 2 are operating, they generate about 1800KW, which means Cape Town must draw its excess power needs from the national grid. When one of the Koeberg units is down, even more extra power must come from the grid. If BOTH units are down, there is no way for sufficient power to come from the grid because the max capacity is 2900MW, per the Nuclear Regulator. That means one of two things must happen: Cape Town reduce its peak time power demands or rolling blackouts.When a problem occurs at another power station, the amount of power pumped into the grid is reduced. It isn't that the overland lines do not have the capacity to supply Cape Town, it is that those lines must supply other locations in addition to Cape Town and, when Cape Town loses its own local supply, we are stuck at the end of the grid, getting only what is left when everybody else has taken their power from the grid. Also, not all the power pumped into the grid arrives at the other end due to resistance...Eskom estimates 25% is lost enroute, although I have seen estimates of up to 40% over the distance from Mpumalanga to Cape Town.Koeberg cannot be set up to be isolated from the grid because Koeberg, at full capacity, supplies no more than half of Cape Town's power needs...the rest comes from the grid. And when one of Koeberg's units goes down, it needs to be connected to the grid to draw extra power to make up the shortfall. What many of us fail to realize is that Eskom, while a monopoly and a parastatal, is not an independent entity. It is subject to rules and regulations, including court interdicts brought about by environmental groups with the clear and stated objective of preventing Eskom from implementing the plans it has made for meeting Cape Town's energy needs.I get to spend many of my weekends and evenings alone these days as my husband works many extra hours to try to get the downed generator up and running before the other reactor has to be taken down for refuelling. Each one of us can help by reducing our power demands during the day: turn off your geyser when you leave for work in the morning; if you have a swimming pool, turn off the pump during the day. Turn things off when you aren't actively using them, dry your clothes on the line rather than in a tumble dryer or at the laundry. The less power each one of us uses, the less stressed the grid will be.If you have ANY questions, please ask me. I will pass it on to my husband, and if he can answer it, I'll get the answer back to you.CheersSV
Hi SVI got lost right at the start! "The Nuclear Regulator determines how much power can be carried to Koeberg from outside sources." I would think that Koeberg generates power and sends it on to those who need it. Why must power be carried to Koeberg from outside sources? Reply to this Comment
re: re: re: re: re: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station & Eskom Sweet_Violet Wednesday 1 March 2006 1:17 PM 1) The safety systems at Koeberg MUST be operated from a power source outside Koeberg, otherwise when Koeberg has a problem, the safety systems cannot function.2) When fully operational, Koeberg puts out about 1800MW. Cape Town needs between 3400 and 3900MW on an average day. The shortfall must be made up from outside sources.Reply to this Comment
re: re: re: re: re: re: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station & Eskom yzerfontein Wednesday 1 March 2006 2:51 PM 1) I can understand that the safety systems must be operated from an external power source. As the current external power source is unreliable, it seems like there needs to be a back-up system, perhaps a diesel generator to run the safety system?2) I understand that Cape Town has greater needs than Koeberg supplies. Am I understanding you correctly that these excess needs must run through Koeberg? If so, why? Reply to this Comment
re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station & Eskom Sweet_Violet Wednesday 1 March 2006 3:08 PM 1) the default condition of the safety systems is with the control rods removed from the reactor. So, when power is interrupted to the safety systems, the control rods are automatically removed from the reactor, which shuts it down. So, when there is a disruption on the external power supply, Koeberg automatically shuts down. It is what is known as a "fail safe" system. It takes as much as 5 days to restart the reactor, so once it is shut down by the failsafe, we have several days of insufficient power to endure until the reactor is back on line and generating power. There is always an "interrupt" time while switching from mains power to generator power (if you've ever been in a hospital during a power failure you know that the emergency lighting kicks on immediately (batteries) but the back up systems take a bit longer to come on line.) The safety systems at Koeberg will scramble the reactor (remove the control rods) before a diesel backup can get fired up and producing power. And just as well...if, for ANY reason, the generator fails to fire up, you are left running a nuclear reactor without any failsafe systems!! BAD BUSINESS!2) No, it is not run through Koeberg. There is a single overland line bringing power from Mpumalanga. That one line goes into a substation in the Cape Town area, and power is distributed all over the Western Cape from there, including to Koeberg.If you have anymore questions...Hubby just gave me the info to answer your second one...he's happy to help out. Reply to this Comment
re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station & Eskom yzerfontein Wednesday 1 March 2006 3:43 PM Thanks for the info, it's great having access to an expert :)You mentioned that the Environment groups have stopped Eskom from implementing its plans for Cape Town's electricity supplies. The only one I've heard of was the PBMR. Are there other plans which were stopped? Reply to this Comment
re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station & Eskom Sweet_Violet Wednesday 1 March 2006 4:57 PM As far as Hubby knows, the environmentalists have not held up anything besides the PBMR, but they do have a stated objective of preventing the building of any power plants save those using "renewable" energy sources (solar, wind, etc.) which they don't seem to acknowledge can be DISASTROUS to the environment. Imagine vast tracts of fynbos disappearing beneath solar panels and thousands of our rare birds hacked to death by the wind turbine blades (google "Altamont Pass" for what is happening to the raptors at the Altamont wind farm in Northern California...THOUSANDS die every year!).The PBMR has been Eskom's pilot project for increasing power supplies to the Cape and the environmentalists have blocked it at every turn. Additionally, Eskom has been saying for at least three years that there was a crisis looming in the Cape if new plants were authorized but government hasn't been listening. We are now paying the price for our own indifference...nobody has held the environmentalists' feet to the fire and demanded that they propose viable alternatives to the nuclear power stations that they stubbornly, selfishly, and ignorantly oppose.Eskom continues to investigate various forms of sustainable energy sources, but at this time, none of them are sufficient to the task of supplying Cape Town's energy needs. Fossil fuel plants are environmentally untenable, not to mention that there is no fuel for them in the Cape. Bottom line, nuclear is all there is for Cape Town, short term, and those environmental groups, operating on presumption and specious logic, are determined to prevent (or delay as long as possible) the building of ANY new nukes here. And if they continue to succeed, we can just get used to the blackouts because our needs already outstrip Eskom's ability to provide. Reply to this Comment
re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station & Eskom yzerfontein Wednesday 1 March 2006 5:15 PM Would the PBMR have met Cape Town's energy needs?Have you got some references to Eskom highlighting the energy crisis Cape Town is facing?Why cant we increase the supply from the overland transmission lines?(so many questions!) Reply to this Comment
re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: Koeberg Nuclear Power Station & Eskom Sweet_Violet Wednesday 1 March 2006 5:40 PM By itself a PBMR installation would not supply our needs. The "M" PBMR stands for "modular," and it would take more than one of the PBMR reactors to supply Cape Town's needs.My husband has been working on the Koeberg installation for more than three years. Eskom has been highlighting the need for more energy in the Cape for at least as long as he has been on the station because he has been hearing it the whole time he has been there. It is one of the reasons that the PBMR project was sited here rather than at Pelindaba. He was first recruited for this project in 2000, so an educated guess would tell you that Eskom has been actively working on this for at least 6 years. And the environmentalists have been working against it for just as long. Say "nuclear" to them and they protest without even engaging their brains.The Nuclear Regulator has mandated 2900MW. We don't know why that figure was chosen, but my husband says that 2900MW is pretty much the load limit of the overland lines. Think of them like a hosepipe...you can only pump so much water through a hose of a given diameter, no matter how much water you need at the other end, without risking damage to the hose. Same deal with the electrical lines. Can they string more lines? Costly, time-consuming, and no more than a plaster stuck on a spurting aorta. Not only that...remember, South Africa is mandated to reduce its emissions into the atmosphere, and increasing the ability to transmit power from Mpumalanga means we will INCREASE those emissions because to make more power to send to the Cape, they will have to burn more coal...which increases the emissions.The answer is not increasing our dependence on coal fired plants on the other side of the country, the answer is in increasing our own capacity to generate, and for the Cape, the only short term solution is nuclear.(questions are GOOD! Please ask!)SV