South Africa’s Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, Gwede Mantashe, has said the country is gravitating towards Russia or Iran for investments to expand its civilian nuclear power capacity.
The move comes in the middle of a rift with the United States and could delay the renewal of a strategic energy pact.
South Africa, which operates Africa’s only nuclear power plant, Koeberg, plans to add 2,500 megawatts of new capacity to tackle electricity outages that have plagued the economy and to reduce emissions.
“We can’t have a contract that says Iran or Russia must not bid, we can’t have that condition”, Minister Mantashe said. “If they are the best in terms of the offer on the table, we’ll take any (country),” he said.
The proposal comes at a time of tense relations with Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order suspending aid to South Africa, claiming
Pretoria was deepening its commercial, military, and nuclear ties with Tehran.
Meanwhile, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office has denied any nuclear cooperation with Iran.
A South African tender for nuclear projects, initially planned for last year, has been delayed for further consultation following legal challenges led by the then opposition Democratic Alliance party, now part of the coalition government.
Nuclear pact talks in limbo
Pretoria and Washington had been seeking to conclude after almost a decade of talks a new civilian nuclear pact, known as a Section 123 Agreement, a prerequisite for exporting U.S.-made nuclear fuel or equipment.
“The allegations made in the executive order can significantly complicate getting the agreement renewed,” said Isabel Bosman, a nuclear energy researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs.
The State Department spokesperson did not comment on whether Trump’s executive order would affect talks between the two countries.
The previous 123 agreement, implemented in 1997, lapsed in December 2022.
Negotiations for a new agreement have already been finalised at a technical level but nothing is signed yet as legal processes on both sides were incomplete, Zizamele Mbambo, a senior official in South Africa’s energy ministry said.
Failure to secure a new deal could block South African power utility Eskom from sourcing reactor fuel from Westinghouse for Unit 1 at Koeberg, industry analysts say. Unit 2 is supplied by France’s Framatome.
Nuclear energy’s contribution to electricity generation in South Africa
Earlier in January, South Africa’s state-owned power utility, Eskom, announced the successful synchronization of Unit 2 at the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station to the national grid, adding 930MW of capacity to the country’s energy mix.
Unit 2’s contribution of 930MW is expected to play a pivotal role in Eskom’s target of increasing its capacity by 2,500MW by March 2025.
However, its operational license renewal by the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) is still pending, with a decision expected later this year.
Also, the 1.9 GW Koeberg nuclear power plant Unit 1 received a twenty-year extension.
