Paris - South Africa's nuclear bidding process was placed on hold last month as Eskom opted to reprioritise capital spending plans amid funding constraints and global financial turmoil.
The terms of the offer made by French nuclear company Areva in its bid to build a 3 300 megawatt nuclear power plant in South Africa would stand until the end of the year, Jean-Jacques Gautrot, the special adviser to Areva chief executive Anne Lauvergeon, said this week.
Areva, majority owned by the French government, and US nuclear group Westinghouse were shortlisted for the tender process.
Other members of the bidding consortium are French power group EDF and construction companies Bouygues and Aveng.
Gautrot said South African President Kgalema Motlanthe had asked Lauvergeon for more time when she attended the president's international investment advisory council at the end of last month.
The hold-up had arisen both because of the change in South Africa's presidency and the international financial crisis, Gautrot said. Areva understood Eskom needed to make strategic choices, and that this process would take some time.
He was unsure when the decision would be made.
Steve Lennon, Eskom's managing director of corporate services, said last month that a decision would be taken this year as the power utility reassessed both the timing and financing of its nuclear programme. About half of the 40 000MW in new generating capacity that Eskom had previously said it would bring on stream by 2025 had been earmarked to come from nuclear power plants.
Areva's proposal to construct two 1 650MW European pressurised water reactor units for the first plant employs the same technology it uses in Finland, France and China.
It is proposing a similar plant in India, which plans to acquire nuclear equipment worth approximately $14 billion (R139 billion).
Gautrot said the Areva proposal could be extended to nuclear waste management involving the export of spent fuel for recycling. The group had also proposed investing in South Africa's transmission and distribution networks.
Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier, Areva's spokesperson, said the company's nuclear technology cost about €0.05 (R0.64 at yesterday's exchange rate) per kilowatt- hour.
This included the cost of decommissioning.
By comparison, the standard local cost of producing electricity from South Africa's existing coal-fired power stations is about 38c per kilowatt- hour, although the costs associated with the country's new coal stations will probably be substantially higher.