By: Irma Venter
Published: 31 Aug 07 – 0:00
South Africa will require a new and much expanded generation of nuclear experts when electricity utility Eskom starts the roll-out of its nuclear programme.
Eskom CEO Jacob Maroga says 20 000 MW of the utility’s planned 40 000 MW of new generation capacity will be from nuclear sources.
South Africa currently has one nuclear plant for the purpose of generating electricity, in the form of Koeberg, in the Western Cape, which consists of two reactors with a generation capacity of about 900 MW each.
Pebble Bed modular Reactor (PBMR), the home-grown nuclear plant technology under development, will be responsible for up to 5 000 MW of the expected 20 000 MW to come from nuclear energy. The remaining 16 000 MW will come from more conventional nuclear energy plants, such as the pressurised water reactor (PWR) nuclear power station currently in the pipeline.
PBMR CEO Jaco Kriek says the PBMR development team currently constitutes more than 700 people. However, recruitment will see this grow to more than 900, of whom 600 will be engineers and scientists.
The 4 000 MW generation capacity assigned to the PBMR means the construction of around 24 to 30 PBMR plants, he notes.
“The first one of these is expected to be operational by 2012 or 2013.”
A PBMR multi-module, consisting of four reactors, requires a staff complement of 140 people, excluding cleaners and security personnel.
One such plant requires four technical managers (engineers), ten engineers, 30 technicians, 33 control-room staff (a mix of 20% engineers and 80% technicians), 12 plant operators (technicians), 22 artisans, three physicists and chemists, three planners and schedulers, three quality controllers, an administrative staff of 15, and five store- and utility men.
Supplying these highly-skilled people – currently in short supply in South Africa – is not the PBMR development company’s problem, though.
Kriek says Eskom as the owner will have to recruit and train the people to operate each PBMR plant.
“As far as I understand they are currently training people for this purpose.”
Eskom nuclear stakeholder management senior manager Tony Stott says South Africa’s expertise with respect to the management, operation and maintenance of nuclear power plants resides within Eskom.
“The retention of nuclear skilled staff for the existing Koeberg nuclear power station is essential to sustain high safety and technical performance levels.
“In addition, nuclear skilled staff are required for management, operation and maintenance of the proposed PBMR demonstration power plant and the proposed pressurised water reactor (PWR) nuclear power station, should these two projects receive the necessary approvals, and are constructed,” says Stott.
He notes that recruitment of qualified, although inexperienced, staff is already being undertaken for in-house technical training, as well as training with vendors or other utilities, such as French power utility EDF.
For the proposed PWR power station (Nuclear-1 project), thirty operators/engineers have already been recruited, and are receiving basic PWR nuclear training.
More recruitment and training for Nuclear-1 is scheduled for the remainder of the year and beyond, depending on project development.
A similar numbers of operators/engineers are already in training for the PBMR project, says Stott.
“For Koeberg, and the . . . nuclear portfolio in general, we are in our third year of capacity building with respect to the increase of technical staff numbers to counter future and present turnover.”
Stott says the critical skills required are reactor operators, engineers, technicians, artisans, reactor physicists, health (radiation protection) physicists, chemists and project managers.
He adds that negotiations with potential vendors for the proposed PWR nuclear power station will include a training element.
“Once contracts have been signed (which cannot happen until all the required authorisations have been obtained) staff can be seconded to the successful vendor for training in their facilities.”
Source: www.engineeringnews.co.za
