Cape Town’s Copperheads unit recovers 53 km of stolen cable, 1.2 t of metal

The City of Cape Town’s (CoCT’s) specialist metals theft unit, the Copperheads, has recovered more then 53 km of stolen cable during the last six months of 2023. The unit says it executed 404 autonomous operations, 1 260 scrapyard inspections, 1 777 hotspot patrols and responded to 277 complaints from the public during this period.
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Night loadshedding escalates to Stage 3 

Loadshedding will jump to Stage 3 at 16:00 Monday after a delay in the return to service of two generating units. “Over the past 24 hours, five generation units were taken offline for repairs. Additionally, the return to service of two generating units that were on planned maintenance was delayed due to an opportunity to perform preventative maintenance. These factors have contributed to the shortage of available capacity necessitating the implementation of Stage 3 loadshedding from 16:00 today until 05:00 on Tuesday,” Eskom said.  “Thereafter, loadshedding will be reduced to Stage 2 until 16:00 on Tuesday. This pattern of Stage 2 loadshedding from 05:00 until 16:00 and Stage 3 loadshedding from 16:00 until 05:00 will be repeated daily until further notice.” 
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NNR approves the separation of the operating timelines of Koeberg’s nuclear reactors

The National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) has announced that it has approved the request of national electricity utility Eskom to separate the operational timelines for the two reactors of the Koeberg nuclear power plant (NPP). Koeberg, located on South Africa’s west coast, near Cape Town, is the country’s (and still Africa’s) only operating NPP. (The continent’s second NPP, El Dabaa in Egypt, is still under construction.) The two reactors were designed Unit 1 and Unit 2. “After completing its safety assessment, the NNR confirmed that the approval of the separation of the units will not impact the safety of the Koeberg nuclear power stations,” reported the regulator, in its press release.
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