Energy experts have cast doubt on government efforts to bring back the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) project, warning that South Africa has neither the skills nor the money to get it off the ground.
Earlier this month, energy minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa released details of the 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which mapped out the country’s future energy mix, with renewables, gas and nuclear supplying more power to the country than coal by 2039.
The minister also announced that the country will restart the PBMR by the first quarter of next year, with the aim of further industrialising the economy.
The PBMR, which is a type of high-temperature, gas-cooled nuclear reactor that was developed by Germany and taken further by South Africa, was shut down in 2010 after billions of rand was spent in research and development. This was due to a lack of a prototype, customers and resources.
Chris Yelland, energy analyst and MD of EE Business Intelligence, told TechCentral that at one stage the project employed hundreds of scientists, engineers and technicians yet “never produced any physical product”. He said he used to refer to the PBMR as a “paper reactor”.
He said that while South Africa had aspired to lead in small modular reactor (SMR) development, including the PBMR, the country lacked the necessary manufacturing and engineering capacity – particularly in the nuclear sector.
“Only if you have deep pockets and resources … can you develop them over time,” Yelland said.
‘Long shot’
He said that 15 years later, South Africa is so far behind new SMR technology, it will not be able to catch up. “It’s a hell of a long shot. We must keep a level head. I’m sceptical [of the PBMR’s future success].”
Yelland believes the country should instead wait to see what happens to the 80 SMR projects that are in various levels of development elsewhere in the world. He predicted only around four or five will make it to commercial success.
Prof Anton Eberhard, an energy policy and investment specialist and founder of the Power Futures Lab at the UCT Graduate School of Business, agreed with Yelland. He said Ramokgopa announcing that the care and maintenance status of the PMBR is going to be lifted by next year “doesn’t actually mean much”.
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“It was closed down in 2010, and that was after about 15 years of work – South Africa’s most expensive research and development project ever. In those 15 years, they couldn’t even produce a working prototype or demonstration project, and that is the reason it was closed down. They just didn’t achieve significant progress and they spent a huge amount of money, I think at that stage, more than R11-billion…,” Eberhard said.
“So, unless a very significant new budget is allocated – and I cannot see that happening with a fiscally constrained state – I don’t think it really means very much. Secondly, of the expertise that was there, most of it has gone abroad. It’s not just a budget they need; they need to rebuild capabilities. And I just don’t think they have it.”
He said China is the only country that has a demonstration SMR project. It has not been commercialised yet. And in the US, “huge amounts” of private sector money are being pumped into SMR development, in part to fund new AI data centres.
“I think all those companies are now way ahead of where we are on the PBMR. I think they would really struggle to resuscitate that project and would struggle to compete,” Eberhard said.
Responding to criticism over the PBMR, David Nicholls, chairman of the board of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), said there is confusion in some quarters about the plans. Necsa is in charge of lifting the care and maintenance of the PBMR and developing SMRs in South Africa.
Nicholls, who was the project leader of the PBMR for 10 years, told TechCentral that two facilities – for helium testing and fuel development –had been maintained while the project was in care and maintenance.
He said a possibility, which he described as “quite credible and quite positive”, is replacing the current Eskom coal stations as they close down with SMRs on the same site.
Necsa plans to go to market soon to identify potential partners in developing an SMR.
On concerns about South Africa not having the skills to develop an SMR, Nicholls said his experience suggests otherwise. In 1995, when he started working on the PBMR, nobody had a “clue” how high temperature gas reactors worked, and five years later South Africa was accepted internationally as world experts in the field.
Also, while many of the experts who worked on the project have emigrated, Nicholls said many of them were doing contract work on SMR projects.
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“Those people haven’t disappeared. If we were to actually have a serious project that people believed was real – not some paper study – a large number of them would come home,” he said. – (c) 2025 NewsCentral Media
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