South Africa, China collaborate on nuclear energy development

According to an article on the Power Engineering website, China and South Africa have signed a Memorandum of Understanding facilitating cooperation on the development of pebble bed nuclear reactor technology.

China brought its first pebble bed nuclear reactor online in 2000, achieving full operational capacity in 2003. South African company Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Ltd and China’s Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology of Tsinghua University have been working together on the development of the technology.

The meeting, held in Washington DC, cemented the commitment of both nations to developing clean, efficient nuclear power. Both countries are currently heavily reliant on coal power generation, which is costly in financial and environmental terms.

Says Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (Pty) Ltd CEO, Jaco Kriek: “While the two projects have chosen slightly different technical approaches, we both fully believe that high temperature, gas-cooled reactors using pebble fuel offer the best potential for sustainable, clean, reliable and safe sources of energy globally,”

“The pebble bed technology will bring a a new option to the energy market in the near future which offers flexible, smart grid solutions for electricity, customer-centric process heat and steam solutions for petrochemical industries, oil sands extraction and desalination. It will also pave the way to high temperature hydrogen production.”

Both countries are regarded as world leaders in the development of the new technology.

The original article can be found HERE.