EMERGING MARKETS | AFRICA’S NUCLEAR PROMISE
Realising Africa’s nuclear promise
Although Africa has been home to multiple research reactors for decades, to date commercial nuclear power on the continent has been limited to South Africa and the Koeberg plant. That could be about to change though as Egypt’s El Dabaa nears completion and a host of other African nations look to get aboard the nuclear train.
By Francis Agar, Chief Technology Officer, RPA Nuclear Consult
GIVEN THE MANY REACTORS PEPPERED all over Africa, nuclear power is nothing new to the continent. Since the 1960s, the continuous operation of the handful of reactors has navigated through shifting geopolitical winds, civil wars, coups, technical ambitions, reactor accidents, and non-proliferation challenges. Perhaps most infamous among these is South Africa’s 20 MW SAFARI-1 materials- testing reactor, supplied by Atomics International in 1965. Safari-1 operated outside IAEA safeguards and is to this day suspected to have played a crucial role in the Vela incident of 1979 in which a flash of light was detected by the Vela satellite and was thought to be nuclear in origin. Elsewhere, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with all
the challenges it has endured, was home to a 100 kW TRIGA Mark II reactor, which served in training, isotope production, and research roles. Other research reactors are Ghana’s 30 kW Miniature Neutron Source Reactor from CNNC; Nigeria’s 30 kW NIRR-1 pool-type unit from China; Algeria’s Soviet- designed 1 MW NUR reactor; Egypt’s 2 MW ET-RR-1 from the Soviet Union and the 22 MW ET-RR-2 they got from Argentina.
At the moment, Africa’s only commercial nuclear power plant is located in South Africa at Koeberg, north of Cape Town, where two 900 MW PWRs from Siemens/KWU have endured Western embargoes and vendor dependencies until post-1994 democratic reforms that bolstered
transparency at the National Nuclear Regulator. This will soon change as the four VVER-1200s are currently under construction at El Dabaa in Egypt. Their development will qualify Nuclear Renaissance 2.0 as a global phenomenon. There are many other developments on the continent that justify such an outlook. Construction scheduling for Dual Fluid’s novel “Generation V” prototype that incorporates both a lead-cooled and molten salt loop in Kigali, Rwanda, has targeted an aggressive two-year window from groundbreaking to connection to the grid. Demonstration of operation at 50 MWe capacity, reactor transient behaviour under load shifts and emergency-core- cooling scenarios using simulation data are expected to unlock financing from institutions like the World Bank – one of the many risk-averse institutions that have recently lifted moratoriums on the funding of such projects. However, missing from the list of banks whose attitude towards nuclear has been shifted by the colossal energy demands of regenerative AI is the African Development Bank (AFDB). The project proceeds amid accusations of Rwanda’s
alleged involvement in some cross-border militarism that has destabilised the eastern swathes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The accompanying non-proliferation risks have thrown the role of the African Commission on Nuclear Energy (AFCONE) into sharp relief.
Above: With four VVER-1200 units, El Dabaa is to become Africa’s second commercial nuclear power plant 36 | June 2025 |
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