Motivation with regard to saving the beaches in St Francis Bay and thus the whole of Kouga and the Eastern Cape’s economy.
by Sandra Hansen
Kouga and the Eastern Cape municipalities and the ANC government are banking on saving the economy of the poor Eastern Cape with the nuclear power station at Thuyspunt off the coast of St Francis Bay. This is not going to happen. The salvation of the Kouga district and thus the Eastern Cape lies in Tourism.
The cost of building the nuclear power station at Thuyspunt off the coast at St Francis Bay will be in the order of two trillion rand currently to build and then subsequently decommission the plant. A nuclear power station has a limited life span at the end of which it has to be decommissioned. This makes nuclear power far too expensive. The cost per megawatt is far too expensive to run. Nuclear power stations in America and Europe have found them unfeasible and are currently decommissioning many of them. The world wants clean renewable power and will force South Africa to go away from running coal power stations and nucleur power stations and to change to use clean renewable power.
The cost of building the power station at St Francis Bay will bankrupt South Africa.
If the project is built, owned and run by a French, Russian or Chinese company the chances of using local labour based on the history of Mudupi and Khusile is dismal. For the cost of building these two power stations they could have built seven if it had been given to a private South African company. To have overseas companies owning and building these important services could be another disaster like the toll roads in Gauteng. The Kouga harbour is a good initiative however it cannot compete with Durban. It is moving very slowly and the decline of manufacturing is not helping.
The best thing that the Eastern Cape has for it is the natural beauty, environment and abundance of Game Parks, beautiful beaches and historical towns making tourism the most obvious income generator opportunity. The weak rand also influences tourists decision on where to travel and hence the growth in tourism in the area.
The damage to the beaches on the South African coast specifically St Francis bay has to be seriously addressed. There are many examples of tourism destinations around the world where tourism has died when their beaches have eroded away. A good example is Durban. If the beaches there had not been saved the city of Durban would have died and there would be no tourism. The beaches at St Francis bay have now reached a critical point and are basically unusable forcing people to go else where. There seems to be a general impression that it is up to the residents to save the beaches from this devastation. This issue can also be turned into a racial issue with respect to demographics but it is not and it could be an argument that it is the wealthy people that will have to dig into their pockets to save the beaches and it should not be. The reason is that a bigger view has to be taken to creating a sustainable community by creating more work opportunities through which there could be an all round all year income stream.
Government must step in and take control of the situation and make improvements as has been done in Durban. A bigger view needs to be taken of the situation. It is not just about repairing the beaches for the locals to use but for the local economy as well as the economy of the whole country.
If Government carries on with the nucleur power station at Thuyspunt, it will be clearly only to hide corruption as is being done in all the other large developments that have taken place in our country. If Government truly wants to grow the Eastern Cape then this is the time to start developing tourism and to immediately initiate saving the beaches.
I don’t think this article is very well informed and tends to be an emotional response. First of all they are building New Nuclear power stations in Europe, UK and USA. In Fact the Russians are involved in building some of those so lets bury the “Rooi Gevaar” of the previous Government. Secondly the continual reference to the time and cost as well as employment is based on the building Coal fired stations. Koeberg in Cape Town was built by the French but there was a component of local labour it is currently run by local resources with an oversight from the French. There are currently plans to expand the Nuclear Power station in Cape Town and while there are some objections it is no where near as vociferous as the debate on Thyspunt. I wonder how much worse the situation would have been on Loadshedding if it hadn’t been for Koeberg. While everyone is making a big thing about wind and solar they should bear in mind that based on an international survey global energy sources are Gas 32.9%, Coal 26.0%, Nuclear 20.7% Hydroelectric 9.6%, Wind 3.3% and Solar 0.3%. One can see from these stats it is going to be a long long time before the alternatives are able to even meet the needs. In the meantime the clock is ticking as it will take 10years plus to build new power stations and in the meantime the economy can not grow to its full potential that means jobs will not be created. The number of jobs at the actual power station are insignificant compared to those created by a growing economy. Rooting out corruption in the system is a completely different issue to whether we can delay taking decisions to generate sufficient energy to enable the economy to grow.
I fully support the aspect of getting tourism as the energy behind growth in the E.Cape but this is not going to happen if we don’t have enough electricity
The sand dunes in Oyster Bay are a much bigger problem that the beach in St Francis Bay but I wholeheartedly agree with you – no power station and focus on tourism and stop the corruption with the powers that be for now.
Very good point. Europe has so much power that they don’t know what to do with it. This is due to their renewable initiatives. They cannot build power stations in Europe due to their surplus. This means that they have to find customers abroad. The power station building market has died there.
The Western Cape and KZN are doing something right, with their tourism, but we could do so much more with support from Government
If all the rocks were re-placed to run at 90 degrees to the beach as was done so many years ago in Durban,the build up of sand against these ;groins ‘would produce a slowing of the inshore ,longshore current resulting in a return of the beaches ,and no doubt more world class surf breaks ,renewed economy ect ,nuclear deal is a complete nobrainer ,we can only hope sanity will prevail
Quite right Ian, instead of the sand in suspension being dropped at the point where the wave wash slows – at the top of the tide line , the high tide turbulence against the rocks is now picking up the sand and carrying it away in the back wash. Groynes are the answer, preferably in a cupping shape to stall longshore drift and maximise deposition. I am surprised that simple and cheap sandbag groynes are not already in place – any groyne is better than no groyne, even if they get damaged in bad weather