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// ]]>As an act of goodwill to determine the energy plan for the coming 25-35 years South Africans are currently involved in a “participatory & consultative” Integrated Resource Plan (IRP2) process – a supposed blueprint for South Africa’s future, in spite of objections that government’s Integrated Energy Process is still far from completion.
Among others the Civil Society Energy Caucus, a coalition of numerous civil society organisations that engage on energy issues, submitted detailed comments on the IRP2 and presented views at stakeholder plenary session of 8th June. They have still not had any response to their submission from the Department of Energy or anyone else.
The deadly legacy of radioactive toxic contamination of water in the Witwatersrand from uranium and chemicals from mining has yet to be adequately addressed.
When you’ve done reading this, please Google “Russian nuclear legacy” showing a litany of horror stories from warheads and decaying submarines to radioactive lakes and rivers, massive nuclear explosions in addition to the Chernobyl accident, growing discoveries of radioactive “hotspots”, over-filled radioactive storage facilites in very bad condition, neglected maintenance and unpaid nuclear workers. Environmental groups say the Russian nuclear industry has not managed to address the question of nuclear waste disposal in general.
Russia’s nuclear reprocessing facility – Mayak – is described as “the most polluted place on earth” and has seen a series of serious accidents. But Mayak is just one of Russia’s nuke facilities. The country has almost 100, situated in 10 “nuclear cities”, mostly closed and the location for some of Russia’s most dangerous rotting infrastructure. Reports indicate there is still a very low level of safety awareness in that country.
Highlights of Zuma’s deal with Russia:
- Medvedev, Zuma make deals in metals and nuclear industriesRussia to control almost half of South Africa’s low enriched uranium market
- Russia to control almost half of South Africa’s low enriched uranium market
- Deliveries begin this year
- Russia to provide SA nuclear power stations with uranium until 2017
- Russians to help build new nuclear plants in SA
- Eskom confirmed it has already signed contract with Russian U-trader
Maxim Shipenkov / AP
President Dmitry Medvedev welcoming South African leader Jacob Zuma in the plush Kremlin ahead of talks Thursday.
Medvedev, Zuma Oversee Dealmaking
06 August 2010 (which marks the 65th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshma, Japan)
By Maria Antonova
President Dmitry Medvedev met with his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, on Thursday in Moscow, where the two oversaw deals in the metals and nuclear industries.
Under the deal, Russian state uranium trader Tenex will sell enriched uranium to Eskom Holdings for use at South Africa’s Koeberg nuclear station, which accounts for 5 percent of South Africa’s energy needs.
The contract is an extension of one reached 15 years ago that is about to expire. Under the new contract, deliveries will begin in 2011 and last until 2017 to 2018. Russia hopes eventually to control 45 percent of the low-enriched uranium market in South Africa, Russia’s state nuclear corporation Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters.
Additionally, Norilsk Nickel signed a memorandum with the South African government to create a joint mining venture in South Africa.
“We will be engaged in the exploration and production of minerals in the framework of this venture with the South African government,” Norilsk Nickel head Vladimir Strzhalkovsky said, Interfax reported.
The metals giant is already involved in a joint venture with African Rainbow Minerals, which mines for nickel, zinc, cobalt, chromium and platinum.
On the governmental level, the two countries agreed to cooperate on space issues and may jointly launch satellites using Russian equipment, Federal Space Agency head Anatoly Perminov said, adding that Russia would also build a space data collection center in South Africa.
Among other deals reached in the course of the visit were agreements to cooperate on agricultural trade issues and visa-free diplomatic visits.
Medvedev and Zuma, who led a delegation of 11 ministers (75 officials from 13 departments, including five young people from the newly revamped youth entity, the National Youth Development Agency…and business delegation, which is expected to be led by the chairman of the SA-Russia Business Council, Robert Gumede*) and about 100 businessmen in his first visit to Russia since taking office in May, also discussed South Africa’s potential participation in the BRIC bloc.
Brazil, Russia, India and China, which have been grouped together as “BRICs” because of their fast-growing economies and regional influence, formalized the grouping when they started holding official summits last year.
“South Africa’s participation in discussing various issues in the BRIC format would be very productive” since South Africa is also an emerging economy, Medvedev said, according to the transcript of the conference posted on the Kremlin’s web site.
“Our countries share the commitment to a more fair distribution of power and influence on the global economic scene,” Zuma said, adding that Russia and South Africa were “natural partners.”
Russia has always been “sympathetic to the struggle of African countries for independence” and is “open to developing relations of a new kind,” Medvedev said.
Zuma offered Medvedev his condolences for the Russians who have perished in the wildfires that are currently devouring the central part of the country. He also invited Medvedev to visit South Africa in 2012, the year of Russia’s presidential elections.
© Copyright 1992-2010. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
Highlights from other reports:
Business Report reports:
- South African power utility Eskom on Friday confirmed that it has signed a contract with Russian state uranium trader Techsnapexport (Tenex) for the supply of low enriched uranium to Eskom.
- Russia’s nuclear regulatory body Rosatom Nuclear Energy State Corporation suggested that Russia was ready to build a nuclear power plant in South Africa.
The Nambian reports:
- No tenders have been issued yet, but discussions have taken place, according to Trade Minister Rob Davies.
- A delegation visited Rosatom’s subsidiary Tvel, which makes nuclear fuel, on Monday, Tvel said in a statement Wednesday.
Bloomberg reports:
- Russia, South Africa Discuss Potential Nuclear, LNG, Titanium Co-Operation
- Zuma led a delegation of more than 50 politicians, including 11 Ministers and businessmen to Russia this week.
- Trade Minister Rob Davies said SA sees mining, energy and transport as areas where ties with Russia can grow.
- “We see deepening relations with the BRIC countries,” Davies said, referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China, an acronym combining the biggest emerging markets. Trade between Russia and South Africa reached 4 billion rand ($550 million) in 2008, he said.
- Tenex, a unit of Russian nuclear holding company Rosatom Corp., is in talks over supplying South Africa’s Koeberg power plant, Davies said. Russia is also interested in being involved should South Africa decide to build more plants, he said.
- Russia may also deliver LNG to Mossel Bay, Davies said, without giving further details. PetroSA, South Africa’s state- owned oil company, needs to secure replacement supplies to feed the Mossel Bay refinery as its natural gas reserves dwindle.
- South Africa also hopes to use Russian technology to develop a mineral sands deposit that could yield titanium, zirconium and silicon, Davies said. Rare Metals Industries Ltd., a venture with South African, Russian and U.S. investors, said in February it may list shares to fund the $1.5 billion cost of a processing plant needed to turn sands into metal.
RTT News reports:
- Russia has agreed to provide technological support and uranium in building South African nuclear power stations until at least 2017.
- A contract to this effect will come into effect next year.
- Addressing a news conference in the Kremlin after talks with Zuma, Medvdev said the deal was ‘just a beginning’ in developing the immature relations between the two countries.
- The deal includes defense and aerospace
- Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia’s nuclear power corporation ROSATOM, told reporters that the deal enabled Russia to control nearly half of South Africa’s uranium market.
- Russia, possessing the world’s biggest uranium-enrichment capacities, is planning to set up the world’s first nuclear fuel reserve to ensure uninterrupted supplies for the world’s power reactors.
- Russia’s critics have accused it of using its energy supplies as a political weapon.
Fin24 reports:
- Deliveries under the contract will begin in 2011 and last until 2017-2018, Kremlin documents seen by Reuters showed.
- Bilateral trade between South Africa and Russia remains tiny, totaling just $517m last year, a fraction of a percent of Russia’s total external trade turnover of $469bn, according to Russian statistics. Some investment bankers in Moscow say that Russia has been much slower than China to appreciate the potential benefits of investment in Africa. Zuma, who leads Africa’s biggest economy, is seeking to increase trade with Russia and China, which are forecast to grow about 4% and 10% respectively this year.
EarthTimes.org reports:
- The South African Space Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency are also to sign an accord on cooperation in the area of earth observation. Last year, Russia launched South Africa’s first satellite aboard a Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
- Zuma’s visit is part of a diplomatic and trade blitz of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) bloc of four biggest emerging markets. Earlier this year, Zuma visited Brazil and India. Later this month, he will also visit China.
Business Day reports:
- Russia, in hosting SA, is on a quest to regain lost ground as an influential player on the continent. Its influence has waned significantly since the collapse of the Soviet Union almost two decades ago. During those days, most exiled African leaders who belonged to liberation movements – including the African National Congress – received their tuition, including grounding in economic policy, in the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet Union not only reduced Russia’s influence in Africa politically but also saw its communist economic principles discarded. Russia is now a democracy pursuing a free market economic system, the very system it detested so passionately during its days as the Soviet Union.
- Also on the agenda will be cooperation in the field of energy affairs. GazProm, a Russian energy enterprise, is looking to explore new natural gas deposits along SA’s western coast.
- There are also plans to hold further discussions on the proposed Kudu power plant on Namibia’s border with SA. It is estimated the plant will yield 50-billion to 60-billion cubic meters of gas. Energy utility Eskom has reportedly shown interest in acquiring 500MW of the 800MW output from the Kudu power plant to increase its electricity supply to the local market.
- Mr Zuma and Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to sign memorandums of understanding in the fields of plant quarantine and visa exemption for diplomatic and official passport holders. Other memorandums of understanding to be discussed or signed include maritime transport, aviation safety and an extradition order between the two nations.
SOURCES:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/medvedev-zuma-oversee-dealmaking/411794.html
ttp://www.fin24.com/Companies/Eskom-signs-Russian-nuclear-deal-20100805
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/338110,russia-trade-talks-medvedev.html
*http://allafrica.com/stories/201008030041.html
_____________________________________________
SOME BACKGROUND TO THE STORY:
By John Helmer in Moscow
Posted On March 18, 2008 In Africa-Russia
Russia has been locked out of the largest nuclear power contract ever prepared in Africa, despite two years of promises from the South African government that it would invite Russia’s nuclear industry to join a competitive tender with the French and American companies, Areva and Westinghouse.
The lockout appears to be regional in scope, blocking a bid by the Russians to build a nuclear reactor in Namibia, that country’s first. It also makes unlikely that ambitious schemes to draw Russian investment into uranium mining, ore concentration, and uranium fuel enrichment will materialize in southern Africa.
According to the SA utility Eskom, the first SA reactor to be commissioned would cost an estimated R120 billion ($15 billion); six power stations to produce an estimated 20,000MW would cost more than R720 billion ($90 billion), Eskom officials have publicly estimated.
The circumstances in which SA officials made their decision to exclude the Russians have been kept secret for weeks, while crisis talks were held by officials of the two governments, first in Moscow on February 12, and then in Pretoria on March 10.
The secret spilled out after SA Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma came to Moscow, along with the acting director-general of her ministry, Gert Gobler. A communiqué issued by Pretoria claimed their meeting was a routine session of the SA-Russia inter-governmental trade and economic committee (ITEC).
The communiqué claimed there was progress on nuclear power issues, although both Dlamini-Zuma, Gobler and their Russian counterparts knew the reason for the meeting was Russian anger at being shut out of both the nuclear power and the aerospace sectors.
The conflict between Moscow and Pretoria in aerospace follows the recent breakdown of agreements for the Russian space agency Roskosmos to launch SA satellites, one of them the civilian Sumbandila satellite; and another, a South African military communications and reconnaissance satellite.
According to Dlamini-Zuma last month: “the two sides welcomed the establishment of the Joint Co-ordinating Committee for co-operation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy with a view to ensuring a proper and structured implementation of the agreement signed during the visit of President Vladimir Putin to South Africa in September 2006.”
This is a reference to agreements reached, not only during Putin’s visit to Cape Town, but to subsequent reiteration of SA promises to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov in March 2007, and at meetings in Sochi with Putin and other Russian officials in mid-2007.
Dlamini-Zuma also claimed there was no problem in the aerospace sector. She reported on February 13, after her Moscow talks, that “the two sides considered enhanced South Africa – Russia co-operation in the sphere of space research and the finalisation of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between South Africa and Russia in this regard. “
On February 26, Gobler briefed reporters ahead of the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Leaks in the French press had earlier reported that Areva believed it was SA’s preferred bidder for the first nuclear contract.
Gobler referred to a paper leaked to his ministry in February, which disclosed the crisis that had erupted in Russian-SA relations over the cancellation of the invitation to Atomstroyexport (ASE), the Russian reactor builder, and thetit-for-tat cancellation by the Russian space agency Rosatom over agreements to launch SA satellites.
“Many of those allegations are totally unfounded, if not simply untrue,” Gobler said. “The real fact is the insinuations that there are major problems between Russia and South Africa is [sic] simply also not true.”
But Gobler admitted that the nuclear reactor bid was one “of the issues that were raised in that article [and] were up for discussion between the two governments.” The discussion, he added, had been “in a constructive and amicable spirit”, and “that issue is being currently discussed on a government to government level.”
The report on crisis between the SA and Russian governments, Grobler said, was a “list of questions, allegations and insinuations that obviously… involves a number of government departments and that I would not like to comment on this at that point because it needs further consultation with these departments who are accused or allegations are made.”
Although Gobler insisted on February 26that “the relations between Russia and South Africa are in fact very good,” he did not mention that First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov was expected to visit Mbeki shortly after Sarkozy had departed.
Ivanov arrived on March 10, accompanied by two ministers:Yury Trutnev, Minister of Natural Resources, is co-chairman with Dlamini-Zuma of ITEC; and Yury Levitin, the Minister of Transport.
An announcement was issued in Pretoria by Vice President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka just ahead of Ivanov’s arrival. This claimed the visit was “within the context of South Africa’s priority to strengthen bilateral political, economic and trade relations with the Russian Federation. In this regard, relations between Russia and South Africa are driven through the Inter–sessional Intergovernmental Trade and Economic Committee (ITEC)”. The SA statement added that Ivanov was expected to discuss “the status of bilateral political, economic and trade relations between the two countries…[and] preparations for the ITEC that will be hosted by Russia in May 2008.”
Ivanov’s spokesman told Mineweb that the visit to the SA capital, where he met President Mbeki, was not decided until the week before their March 10 meeting. Trutnev said through a spokesman that he had no agenda for the visit, but was there to accompany Ivanov. Levitin told Mineweb, also through his spokesman, that he was accompanying Ivanov, and had no discussion bearing on the satellite controversy.
A newspaper report in Moscow, published immediately after Ivanov’s meetings with Mbeki and Mlambo-Ngcuka, cited a Trutnev deputy, Igor Maidanov, as saying”the supply of energy is top on the agenda.” Maidanov is the director of the Natural Resource Ministry’s international cooperation department. “Russia is aware of South Africa’s present energy problems. I believe that the delegation will discuss this issue in order to find ways to help.”
Russia’s nuclear assistance was the cat Maidanov let slip from the bag SA officials were determined to keep shut.
As co-chairman of ITEC, Trutnev has been a public promoter of deals in the uranium mining, fuel processing, and reactor building segments of the nuclear market. Russia “would invest as much as needed” in new nuclear power stations and joint uranium mining ventures, he told the SA audience last year; a sentiment repeated in SA communiqués on the progress of ITEC.
A source close to Atomstroyexport (ASE) has revealed that early in March, just before Ivanov decided on his SA visit, officials from the SA Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) and the SA Embassy in Moscow had conveyed Pretoria’s message — the decision had been taken at the highest level not to include ASE in the nuclear tender.
An announcement from Levitin and the Russian Transport Ministry claimed the object of their visit to SA this month was to check on the operation of a Russian satellite navigation system, GLONASS; to inspect Russian aircraft modification and flight operating plans for the Antarctic; and to call at Novolazarevskaya, the 47-year old Russian scientific station on Queen Maud Land.
Roskosmos was also represented in Ivanov’s delegation. But asked to say if Ivanov had discussed the satellite problem, Roskosmos spokesman, Alexander Ryadinskiy, replied: “nothing extraordinary happened”.
Ivanov has not commented publicly on the substance or outcome of his SA talks. But a source close to him denied the purpose of his trip had been to visit SA. The source told Mineweb that Ivanov was intending to visit Russian operations in the Antarctic. He had stopped off in Pretoria on his way south, the source now says. Ivanov’s spokesman, Pavel Zinovich, told Mineweb that Ivanov’s talks had “nothing to do with the intergovernmental commission”.
Before he visited SA, Ivanov was on record as urging Roskosmos to do more for the GLONASS system and for Russian satellite launches.
Tseliso Maqubela, who heads the nuclear division of the DME, and Bheki Langa, the SA Ambassador, refuse to answer questions about the crisis triggered by the nuclear power exclusion, and the satellite launching spat.
In Moscow in March, junior SA officials told the Russians they may be invited to bid for the second round of reactor contracts; these are scheduled to be tendered at the end of the 5-year construction period for the first reactors.
This is a sop. Nuclear sector experts in SA and Russia acknowledge that, on account of the differences in technology, training protocols, site and fuel specifications between the French, American, and Russian nuclear reactor systems, it is very rare for a country to buy and operate more than one type of system. South Korea is the exception, however.
In a report this week on Russian marketing efforts for its nuclear power exports, Moscow analyst Yury Humber suggested that outside of China and India, where ASE reactors are dominant, “the competition for nuclear-plant sales may broadly play out along Cold War lines, with Russia grabbing contracts among former Soviet satellites such as Bulgaria and the Czech Republic and African allies including Namibia.”
He quoted US sources as confirming that “Russia is likely to be shut out of U.S. and Western European markets partly because of historical ties to local manufacturers, said Gene Clark, chief executive of U.S. consulting firm TradeTech. ‘The markets that Russia’s going for, I’m not too worried about,’ said Dan Lipman, senior vice president for nuclear power plants at Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse. ‘Myanmar’s not on my list.’”
A source close to ASE told Mineweb that Namibia, a major international mine source for uranium, has made no firm commitment to a reactor tender, or to inviting the Russians to bid.
A visit to Windhoek a year ago by Mikhail Fradkov, then Russia’s Prime Minister, proposed a variety of options for launching nuclear power generation for Namibia. One of the options reported by Mineweb at the time as discussed with Namibian President Hifikepunya Pohamba was a low-capacity floating nuclear power plant. “We want our own power plant utilising our own (uranium) resources… We are pleased the Russian Federation wants to assist Namibia in this field,” Pohamba was quoted as saying.
Last month, the Namibian government repeated its policy target to develop nuclear power generation, and the beneficiation technology to convert locally mined uranium for fuel.
Article printed from Dances With Bears: http://johnhelmer.net
URL to article: http://johnhelmer.net/?p=356
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