Bloomberg reported that Areva SA is confident South Africa will revive a plan to build a nuclear plant this year.

Mr Mohammed Madhi chairman of the company’s local operations said that "If it's restarted this year, it's expected that South Africa can still meet its energy needs without major problems by 2018, which is how long it will take to build a nuclear plant."

It may be noted that Eskom Holdings Limited canceled a plan to build a nuclear plant last year because of costs. Eskom is building two coal fired power plants to boost capacity and prevent a repeat of blackouts that shut mines and factories for five days in January 2008.

Mr Madhi said that "Whatever the considerations were in the past, what is clear today is that the supply-demand situation in electricity is such that the country has no option but to go nuclear. We can't have more coal-fired power stations, we need nuclear."

He added that Areva expects South Africa’s integrated resources plan, due for completion in the third quarter, to include nuclear projects. He said that "We're fairly confident that nuclear will be part of that energy mix. Once the plan has been made public, we expect the government to make a decision fairly rapidly thereafter on the path it will follow for nuclear."

(Sourced from Bloomberg)