Steam Generator Replacement Works at Koeberg Unit 2 in South Africa Pushed Back

Following a study done in collaboration with Framatome, a French nuclear reactor business owned by Électricité de France, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Assystem, Eskom, the South African electricity public utility, has announced the postponement of the steam generator replacement (SGR) work on its three generators at Koeberg Unit 2 to the next planned outage cycle in August 2023.

Jan Oberholzer, Eskom COO explained that this is because some facilities, notably the construction of the building that would house the radioactive steam generators being removed, were considered insufficient to assure that the replacement could be completed within specified quality and time.

The decision to postpone the Steam Generator Replacement Works at Koeberg Unit 2

According to Oberholzer the decision to postpone the project was made early this month, against the backdrop of continuous supply challenges, which posed a load-shedding danger.  The main aim of the postponement is to ensure that the unit’s 920 MW was accessible so as to avoid impacting South Africa’s electricity supply (essentially trying to stave off load shedding) during the high-demand winter season.

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Eskom said that together with Framatome also assessed whether the SGR work that still needed to be done would be completed by the preset due date of June 2022 and concluded that there is a high likelihood that continuing with the work would result in the unit being returned to the grid later than initially planned.

Plans to prolong the life of the Koeberg power station

The Steam Generator Replacement Works at Koeberg Unit 2 is reportedly very essential to Eskom’s determination to prolong the life of the Koeberg power station beyond the existing operating lives of Units 1 and 2 in 2024 and 2025 respectively.

The utility has begun the process of securing a life extension to 2044 and 2045, in that order, and the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) received an application from Eskom for an extension of Koeberg’s operating life on May 10, 2021. The NNR intended to receive Koeberg’s Long Term Operations, or LTO, application safety case by July 2022, following which an adjudication and public consultations would take place.