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The discovery of a previously unknown geological fault zone, along with two earthquakes that were felt in Cape Town last week, has raised concerns about the safety of the Koeberg nuclear power plant, the Sunday Times reported.
The newly discovered Table Bay fault is closer to Koeberg than the epicenter of the Tulbagh earthquake that killed 12 people in 1969.
The Geosciences Council confirmed the discovery this week, but said there was no evidence to suggest that the new fault is active or poses a seismic threat.
Council spokesman David Khoza said this is not a newly formed fault, but an ancient structure that has now been mapped.
“This fault has been around for at least the last 100 million, if not 500 million, of years,” Khoza noted.
The epicenter of the 6.2 earthquake on the Richter scale that was felt last week was 1,600 km southeast of Cape Town.
A subsequent tremor with a reading of 2.9 was measured in the Malmesbury area, blamed for the Milnerton fault.
However, the government has claimed that Koeberg is designed to withstand earthquakes of up to 7.5 on the Richter scale, thanks to gigantic built-in shock absorbers made of neoprene.
Safety concerns arise amid the arrival this week of the first of six new steam generators to be installed at the plant.
Koeberg has already completed 36 of the 40 years of its original design life, but Eskom plans to extend this for another 20 years with replacement generators.
The first three generators will be installed in Unit 1 between February 2021 and June 2021, while the next three will be added in Unit 2 between January 2022 and May 2022.
More plans for nuclear power
Despite the government moving away from nuclear power constructions, the Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Gwede Mantashe Has kept that nuclear energy is still part of the country’s plans.
In May, the department said it plans to expand nuclear capacity in the next five years.
Koeberg is currently the only nuclear plant in South Africa. The campaign for additional facilities largely faded after the ruling party forced President Jacob Zuma to resign in 2018.
The additional plants were generally considered unaffordable and the country’s economic depression has further hampered the government’s ability to pay for them. Under Zuma, the government was pushing for the construction of multiple nuclear plants in the country, which some analysts projected would cost the country more than R1 trillion.
Speaking at the general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier this month, Mantashe said South Africa has initiated consultations with nuclear power reactor suppliers to provide information on costs and schedules and possible ownership models, to through a request for information for the 2,500MW. program aired in June 2020.
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