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CAPE TOWN: South Africa expects to lift the care and maintenance status of its Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) by the first quarter of next year or even earlier, the electricity and energy minister said on Wednesday.
Once considered a global leader in the development of small modular nuclear reactors, South Africa halted its PBMR research in 2010 after spending more than 10 billion rand ($577 million) and before building a planned demonstration model.
“We are far advanced in (our) internal processes to make the case to lift the care and maintenance on the PBMR,” Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, the electricity and energy minister told a media briefing.
State-owned power utility Eskom currently operates the continent’s only commercial nuclear power station near Cape Town. Egypt is building its own plant, while countries including Namibia, Niger and Ghana are exploring nuclear options.
“We are seeing huge opportunities around the world, with major players on data centers the biggest investors on SMRs (small modular reactors),” he added.
South Africa’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), expected to be published this week, outlines more than 105 gigawatts of new generation capacity by 2039. Renewable energy is projected to account for more than half of this, as the country seeks to reduce its dependence on coal.
New nuclear generation capacity of 5.2 gigawatts is foreseen, with gas at 16 gigawatts, wind at 34 gigawatts and solar PV at 25 gigawatts by 2039.
South Africa has ambitions to re-invigorate its nuclear industry, with the IRP suggesting that this industrialization plan will determine the merits of 10 gigawatts of new nuclear generation capacity.
Ramokgopa said China, South Korea, the US and Russia are among countries that could partner with the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation on developing small modular reactors.
“We don’t think we will run out of suitors who can partner with us on the PBMR.”

GENEVA: UN chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for a fightback against climate disinformation ahead of next month’s COP30 summit after US President Donald Trump branded climate change the “greatest con job ever.”
Guterres issued a robust defense of “clear-eyed” climate science and data, without which, he said, the world would never have understood the emergence of the “dangerous and existential threat of climate change.”
“We must fight mis- and disinformation, online harassment, and greenwashing,” Guterres said at the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) weather and climate agency in Geneva.
“Scientists and researchers should never fear telling the truth.”
Guterres’s remarks will be seen in some quarters as a riposte to Trump’s speech at the United Nations in New York last month, in which the Republican president championed fossil fuels and derided green technologies.
“Climate change — it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” said Trump.
The “carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions,” he said.
“We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables, by the way: they’re a joke, they don’t work, they’re too expensive,” he added, about his administration’s war on solar and wind power, bolstered by a new law that ends clean energy tax credits.

- Planet on the ‘brink’ -

But Guterres insisted that in 2024, “almost all new power capacity came from renewables,” and investment was surging.
“Renewables are the cheapest, fastest and smartest source of new power. They represent the only credible path to end the relentless destruction of our climate,” he insisted.
The WMO is marking its 75 anniversary this year, and is leading the charge for all countries to be covered by extreme weather early warning systems by 2027.
“Global warming is pushing our planet to the brink,” said Guterres.
“Every one of the last 10 years has been the hottest in history. Ocean heat is breaking records while decimating ecosystems. And no country is safe from fires, floods, storms and heatwaves.
“As always, the poorest and most vulnerable countries pay the highest price — particularly small island developing states and the least developed countries.”
The COP30 summit will be held in the Brazilian Amazon city of Belem from November 10-21.
The UN secretary-general said countries needed strong domestic climate action plans in time for the summit, urging nations to address the problem of climate disasters at source.
“By November’s UN Climate Conference in Brazil, countries must deliver bold new national climate action plans that align with limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” Guterres said.
He said these had to include commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade.
“Much greater ambition is required.”