As evidenced by the attached correspondence and (Revised) Socio-Economic Impact Report, the mandatory process of the Environment Impact Report for the Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) Demonstration Unit at Koeberg in Cape Town is reaching its closing stages, with the Final Environmental Impact Report due in September 2009. Given her stated commitment to a nuclear energy future, it seems a foregone conclusion that the recently appointed Minister of Water & the Environment, the Honourable Bujelwa Sonjica MP, will rubber-stamp the deeply flawed process with her signed Record of Decision (RoD) — in favour of the beast.

Given the possibility of fresh challenges in the High Court, as well as the renewed and envigorated popular mobilisation in Greater Cape Town area against this travesty of public spending, we believe it is of vital importance to register and engage — however succinctly — in this pathetic excuse for public participation only to ensure that we have collectively “exhausted all remedies” before approaching the Bench.

May I then remind you as to what issues remain for objection to the PBMR:

1. Its hopelessly flawed issues relating to technical safety:

1.1. the high temperatures greater than anticipated in the the case of the AVR in Germany, leading to greater instability
1.2. the lack of integrity with regard to the continued sphericality of the silicon carbide “pebbles” under high temperature, pressure and constant jostling, leading to the jamming of the outlet flue, as occurred at the THTR-3000 in Germany in May 1986.
1.3. the possibility of a leak in the piping whereby oxygen can enter into the system and cause the graphite to spontaneously ignite, as occurred at Sellafield in the United Kingdom in 1957.
1.4. the possibility of the graphite tiles on the inside of the reactor housing falling off the walls under high pressure, temearature and jostling — not to mention constant neutron bombardment.

2. The logical and scientifically well-known threats to human health, both in terms of workers and the surrounding community, from the long-lived and carcinogenic radio-isotopes Cesium-137 and Strontium-90, which are equally well-known and well-documented daughter products of nuclear fission.

3. The reasonably unlikely but scientifically plausible threat of an accident on the major scale of INES-7 )akin to Chernobyl of April 1986), whereby massive releases of the radioactive core through a combination of high temperature, pressure and the ingress of oxygen to ignite the graphite, causing a major runaway nuclear firestorm, depositing Cesium-137 over an 80-km radius.

4. The necessity, therefore of instituting a workable emergency plan for the whole of the City of Cape Town — NOT “3 km” !!! – a plan which has been categorically stated by members of the Cape Town Disaster Management as being “impossible to implement successfully”.

5. The further hindrance of development north of Cape Town because of the extended presence of a nuclear complex at Duynefonteyn.

6. The unacceptability of the production of high-level (spent fuel) nuclear waste without a reasonable location for its proper long-term storage (NOT “disposal”) and management (over 24 000 years, in the case of Plutonium-239), thereby rendering the technology unclean, unsustainable and at odds with the principle of inter-generational equity.

7. The unacceptability of the high costs of the PBMR — as well as the added costs of uranium enrichment, fuel fabrication, transport, and security when so many better, cheaper and more relatively benign technologies exist for the produciton not only of electricity but also of pure energy for lighting, cooking, space heating, water heating and the running of electrical appliances.

8. An increase in the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, demonstrated not only by the capture and successful prosecution of nuclear weapons dealers in South Africa, but also the yet unsolved and highly sophisticated raid on the nuclear complex at Pelindaba, a national key point, thus demonstrating the incompetency of NECSA and the NNR in protecting or prohibiting anything remotely resembling public safety.

I trust that you will make your voices heard in resisting this unilateral imposition of an obsolete and technically unworkable “solution” to global warming and will encourage all who you know that work and play in Cape Town to oppose this rubbish in the name of democracy, environmental justice and economic common sense.

Join CANE now and help us change nuclear policy in this country once and for all.

Go to www.cane.org.za and add your voice to those who say “Nukes? No thanks!”