The National Treasury is investigating the introduction of a tax on carbon-dioxide emissions as part of South Africa’s voluntary commitment to climate change mitigation – government speak for: finally business (and consumers) in SA will be forced to curb its CO2 outputs. This is good news! There was also a suggestion of incentives and a future cap-and-trade mechanism by Van Schalkwyk, who gave a briefing in Cape Town outlining the climate policy a couple of days ago.

Government has been very quick to deny the obvious connection, however – that these policies and strategies could allow them to accelerate their interest in nuclear power. Deat diplomatically insist that... they foresee an upscaling of both renewable and nuclear energy sources and Van Schalkwyk rejected the notion that “the threat of climate change was being used to stem-roll through an aggressive nuclear policy.” [engineering news] We’re not so sure…

Nuclear is hotting up in the press. Last week the Sunday Times published an article that outlined a report by the research centre that invented the PBMR reactors, raising fears as to the safety of the technology and suggesting that the SA government has jumped the gun in pushing for a demonstration PBMR plant at Koeberg. [Sunday Times]

Add to this the blow to the revival of atomic power by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (even the US gov’s nuclear agency thinks nuclear is a bad idea!). The NRC says that the “standardized” designs on which the entire premise of returning nuclear power to the centre stage is based have massive holes in them, and may not be ready for approval for years to come.

The warning from one of America’s most notoriously docile agencies essentially says: that all cost estimates for new nuclear reactors — and all licensing and construction schedules — are completely up for grabs, and have no reliable basis in fact. Thus any comparisons between future atomic reactors and renewable technologies are moot at best. And any “hard number” basis for independent financing for future nukes may not be available for years to come, if ever. [alternet]