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Construction of Chinese small modular reactor achieves major milestone

A major structural component for China’s ACP100 demonstration small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) has been installed at the Changjiang nuclear power plant (NPP), on the Chinese island province of Hainan, “World Nuclear News” has reported. The component is a steel containment vessel bottom head, which is shaped like a giant bowl and forms, as its name says, the bottom element of the reactor containment vessel. The bottom head was installed on the SMR NPP’s concrete foundation plate. The internal components of a reactor vessel are supported by the bottom head or by the containment vessel’s cylindrical side wall. The side wall is itself also mounted on the bottom head. The vessel is completed by a top head, shaped pretty much like an inverted bowl, and usually removable (to facilitate refuelling).
October 26, 2021 by

SAWEA urges industry members, stakeholders to support global net-zero push

Industry organisation the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA) urges key stakeholders, including governments, economies and communities, to put policies in place that will raise ambitions and remove barriers to the massive scale up in investments in wind power to help reach global net-zero climate targets. As a member and participant in the Global Wind Energy Council’s (GWEC’s) COP26 Working Group, and working in collaboration with its global counterparts, SAWEA joins the GWEC in making this call ahead of COP26 taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, from October 31 to November 12.
October 26, 2021 by

Stage 2 load-shedding to continue until Saturday morning

Power utility Eskom has announced that, owing to a shortage of generation capacity, Stage 2 load-shedding will be implemented from 09:00 on October 26 to 05:00 on October 30. “While Eskom teams have successfully returned a unit each at the Kusile, Matimba and Arnot power stations during the early hours of this morning, further delays in returning other units to service have exacerbated the capacity constraints, hampering the ability to replenish the emergency generation reserves. 
October 26, 2021 by

Diesel and load-shedding feature in summer outlook as Eskom’s maintenance recovery takes longer …

State-owned electricity utility Eskom says its reliability maintenance recovery (RMR) interventions have not yet succeeded in stabilising the performance of its unpredictable coal fleet and that more than year of ongoing maintenance is needed to address the poor performance of its generation assets. When Eskom announced the RMR in early 2020, it indicated that it expected that the intervention would help ease, albeit not eliminated, the risk of load-shedding by about October this year.
October 25, 2021 by

Availability of sustainability funding driving changes in legal agreements

Demand for sustainability-linked loans is surging and banks are competing to offer this new form of finance in South Africa, which is driving legal firms like Webber Wentzel to innovate in the loan terms and agreements that they are drafting for clients, say Webber Wentzel partners Khurshid Fazel and Karen Couzyn. A sustainability-linked loan or a sustainability-linked debt security, collectively referred to as SLL, is different from a green bond.
October 25, 2021 by

Just Energy Transition to result in 300 000 new energy jobs over ten years – De Ruyter

Ongoing analysis and work done by various groups into the so-called Just Energy Transition (JET) points to the potential creation of 300 000 direct, indirect and induced jobs in South Africa’s electricity sector over the next decade, Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said on October 22.

He added that this figure was over and above accounting for job losses in the coal sector as a result of the looming shuttering of some coal-fired power generation units.

October 22, 2021 by