Nuclear vendor Areva, which is planning to participate in a French industry bid for South Africa’s proposed nuclear build programme, indicated on Tuesday that, in the absence of an actual tender, it was not possible to offer any certainty as to the likely cost of the programme. It has been widely speculated that it could cost South Africa up to R1-trillion to build the 9 600 MW outlined in the 2010 version of the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which government had yet to update, despite material changes to the demand outlook and a slump in electricity sales to 2007 levels.
