Thyspunt again considered for nuclear site

The plan to build a nuclear reactor at Thyspunt near Cape St Francis has been reignited, with public hearings for an installation site licence scheduled to take place this year. The Herald reports Eskom is pushing ahead with the legislative processes in case the Thyspunt site is ever needed in the future. The announcement of the public hearings comes two years after Eskom and the Department of Environmental Affairs said a nuclear reactor would be built at Duynefontein – near Koeberg in Cape Town – instead of the originally preferred site at St Francis Bay. However, the National Nuclear Regulator placed an advertisement in the Kouga Express on 18 July calling for public hearings for the nuclear installation site licence. Anti-nuclear coalition Thyspunt Alliance has vowed to continue fighting any possibility of a reactor at Thyspunt, but Jeffreys Bay’s Thyspunt Nuclear Development Forum has welcomed the news. Since the publication of the advert, the public hearings have been postponed from the end of September to an unscheduled date in November.