Press statement

Victory for Earthlife Africa - red light for nuclear reactor

Today, the Cape Town High Court decided in favor of Earthlife Africa and set aside the approval for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR).  Earthlife Africa and other interested parties will now have their chance to challenge Eskom's version of the truth.

 ESKOM, the second respondent in this case wishes to construct a demonstration model 110 Mega Watt class PBMR at the site of the only existing nuclear plant in South Africa near Cape Town. On 25 June 2003, the Director General of the Environmental Affairs and Tourism awarded a requisite authorization in terms of section 22 (3) of the Environmental Conservation Act 73 of 1989 (ECA)

Earthlife Africa had argued that the Director General who authorised the plant was obliged to afford them a fair hearing before taking the decision to grant the authorisation and failed to, that he failed to properly address the problems posed by nuclear waste and he abdicated responsibility to properly consider safety issues by deferring to the national nuclear regulator. Furthermore, the group had argued that the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) on which Olver made his decision contained a substantial number of documents that were not previously made available to the public, with ESKOM maintaining that they were commercially confidential.
 
The Judge Ben Griesel handed down a 40 page judgement document in which he judged in favor of Earthlife Africa, a non-governmental, voluntary driven, environmental justice activist organization based in Cape Town, saying that “the DG should allow Earthlife Africa and other interested parties an opportunity of addressing further written submissions to him”.

He also noted that the DG should consider those submissions before making a decision on the mini-reactor.

Earthlife is “very happy” with the Judgment said Liz McDaid the spokesperson of Earthlife Africa." We believe that the PBMR will now be exposed for what it is - a white elephant where Eskom planned to use the people of Cape Town as guinea pigs to test a dubious technology” said McDaid.

With so many pressing social needs in our country, Earthlife believes that once Eskom's information is critically reviewed, it will be obvious to Government that R15bn would be better spend on energy efficiency and implementing alternative energy options.

As a next step, it will be vitally important that this time around, all relevant information is made available to ELA and other interested parties to enable them to comment meaningfully.  This should include the feasibility report produced by an international panel of experts.  This report has been kept secret up till now and Earthlife Africa is now calling on Eskom and Government to release the report.  "Eskom is owned by the state, the PBMR is funded with tax payers money and we believe that the public have a right to know."