OPINION | Creative thinking needed for electricity and water challenges in the country

In Gauteng, there are warnings of water shortages. We also remember the Day Zero water shortage scare in Cape Town a few years ago.

SA does not have much inland water, so it is imperative to think deep into the future.

The reality is that our country needs to double its water supply. As industry expands it will need more water. The population is growing and moving up the social ladder, using more water. We can’t keep telling people to have short showers instead of a bath.

So, elementary water planning dictates that we must find a way to double the national supply.

Meanwhile, we also have an electricity supply issue. With that too, we need to aim for 100% increase. We constantly hear of plans to add more solar power to SA. But the really good sunshine is in the Northern Cape, and there is a snag. There are no more power lines from there to places like Gauteng or the Western Cape, where the electricity could be sold.

Solar enthusiasts say: “Just build more long-range transmission lines.”

But long-range transmission lines cost a lot of money. “But solar is so cheap,” say solar enthusiasts, “As long as you measure the price at our front gate, and somebody else, like Eskom, pays for the power lines, by collecting money from the consumers.”

Reports say we will need 14,000km of new power lines. That will amount to some R200bn, which is enough to build over 30 small nuclear reactors, built in SA by South Africans.

You only get solar power when the sun shines, with none at night, and little before mid-morning and after mid-afternoon. 

No problem, say the sun worshippers, just add batteries, plus more solar panels to charge the batteries during the day, then you can use that electricity around sunset. “But that costs more money,” say the thinking people. Sun folks reply: “Increase the electricity price.”

Meanwhile, a small nuclear reactor will run continuously, with no batteries and no long transmission lines, because the South African small reactor has been designed to not need water-cooling, so, unlike Koeberg, it does not have to be on the coast. You can put one near a Free State gold mine, near Sasol, or near the new Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in northern Limpopo. So, you don't need the long transmission lines. Reason therefore says; use the R200bn to build small reactors and put them near the consumers.

In fact, one can think of a cellphone cell system which is like the honeycomb of a beehive. Each cell has its own cellphone base tower, and that tower serves its cell. When you cross from one cell to the next the tower passes your signal to the next cell. The older conventional telephone system had big central telephone exchanges in the big cities, and they routed all the calls nationwide.

So, we need to think in terms of an electricity cell system, with small nuclear reactors effectively in cells. We still need a big new Koeberg, at a place like Jeffreys Bay, to push big electricity into the country from the side. Then we need another Koeberg on the Northern Cape coast, to push electricity in from the other side of the country.

We need the big and the small nuclear plants.

Returning to the water supply issue; Mother Nature is not going to increase rainfall by 100%. People say, “We are a water-poor country, so where will we get the water?” We get some water from Lesotho, through big pipelines. But the Lesotho source has its limits, too.

SA is not a water-poor country, we have the entire Indian and Atlantic oceans to drink. It is saltwater and is far from the inland consumers. Now think about another aspect, the water problem is actually an energy problem. SA recycles a huge amount of water which needs to be purified, then pumped into large reservoirs and pumped to consumers. The water from Lesotho needs to be pumped too. That all requires electricity.

If you can put small nuclear electricity sources where you like, you can desalinate seawater on the KZN coast, and then pump it far inland. We already pump petrol and diesel from Durban to Johannesburg, through a long pipeline, so water is no problem. Just imagine how a guaranteed water supply will increase agricultural harvests, and make huge money for SA.

We have a small nuclear reactor, developed in Pretoria, the HTMR-100. It is ready to build now. The team is negotiating with various international entities to raise the money. Then we can build and so produce many high-skill permanent jobs for South Africans.

We need to believe in the South African teams and support them to build our own nuclear in our own national interest.

• Dr Kelvin Kemm is a nuclear physicist and chair of Stratek Global, a nuclear project management company based in Pretoria