koeberg power station explosion
Koeberg, the only nuclear power station in Africa, has a pressurised water reactor (PWR) design. The plant location was selected for a number of reasons; it is geologically stable, Eskom’s national grid is easily accessible, and the cold water of the Atlantic Ocean is ideal for cooling. Click here to see other benefits and to sign-up to our reader community supporting quality, independent journalism. Around the same time, Oxford doctoral candidate Renfrew Christie was amassing as much intel as he could about Koeberg under the guise of his academic research into South Africa’s electricity system. Koeberg Power Station management does not respect the lives of its employees and the priority of the management is production over the life of our members,” the … While he spoke, he consulted a small notebook he had filled with handwritten notes in preparation for the interview. Over the years since the bombing, he has told his story to only a handful of journalists, and had often been disappointed with the results. Rodney Wilkinson planted four bombs at the Koeberg nuclear power plant near Cape Town in December 1982. Wilkinson worked for 18 months at the plant. A few days beforehand South African commandos had attacked supposed ANC targets in the kingdom of Lesotho, killing 42 people including women and children. 30134551 Investigation of Explosions E Evidence - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. After lengthy delays, during which the stolen plans were shown to Soviet and Western nuclear scientists for authentication and Wilkinson himself vetted, the ANC invited him to carry out the attack himself. —Initially Koeberg supplied 100% of all energy demanded in the Western Cape —This has changed to 50%, due to changing demand* —Koeberg is the only nuclear power station in Africa —Koeberg can accommodate several additional nuclear power reactors, which is under consideration —Koeberg has the capacity to supply 1860MW to the national grid This is a culmination of exceptional teamwork and collaboration, heralding a key milestone for Africa’s only nuclear power station. “Right from the get-go, it was: Avoid civilian casualty, and don’t spill radiation. It has been decommissioned, and plans are underway to construct a replacement sarcophagus due to the combined effects of the nuclear particles weakening the concrete over time and the hasty nature of it's construction. The attack on the French-built nuclear installation — which, it was suspected at the time, would be used to produce plutonium for the construction of atomic bombs — was planned by the ANC Special Operations department to avoid loss of life and risk of radioactive fall-out. It has been described as one of the only successful attacks on a nuclear base in world history, and is still listed by the ANC’s military wing uMkhonto weSizwe as one of its greatest triumphs in the struggle against apartheid. DM168. Other steps to fight climate change include improved reporting, monitoring and laws, The ANC’s regional secretary in the Amathole is at the head of an alleged scheme to fundraise for his party, Lord’s Resistance Army leader found guilty of forced pregnancy charges in landmark case. The bicycle bomber!! Koeberg nuclear power station is a nuclear power station in South Africa. BECOME AN INSIDER. Koeberg Nuclear Power Station: Plant Life Extension and Ageing Management 1st NNR Regulatory Information ... • Original Koeberg design was approved by the regulator. He said it was important that we get things right. The couple took them to newly independent Zimbabwe with the idea that they could be used by the ANC to launch an attack on the nuclear installation. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA. Despite later denials by the South African authorities, the ANC established that the enriched uranium fuel had been moved to the plant, but had not loaded it into the reactors. But most critical was the principle that no civilians should be harmed, so the explosions needed to take place before the work on Koeberg was completed. 2.1 The Integrated Koeberg Nuclear Emergency Plan is applicable to: 2.1.1 Any nuclear emergency that has or is expected to have a radiological effect within or outside the boundaries of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station that could require an emergency response by several government organisations. Radioactivity reduces with time, but for some isotopes commonly found in nuclear waste,the drop in radiation levels can be very slow. “I will,” he says, with a wolfish grin. High-level nuclear waste is currently stored at Koeberg, while low- and intermediate-level waste is buried in drums at Vaalputs in Namaqualand, in trenches 7m deep. At one stage an accidental short circuit started a cable fire. Koeberg produces about 30 tons of high level waste per year, and all of it is currently stored at Koeberg – over 1000 tons. And it had to be done safely before the startup.”. The Koeberg operation was born of chance in 1978. The attack delayed the commissioning of the plant by about 18 months and cost the apartheid government an estimated half a billion rand. The plant must be dismantled. In November the firm hiring Wilkinson informed him that they were laying him off at the end of the month, but then changed their minds and asked him to stay on another month. You can sing, or you can paint, or you can talk, or you can do this sort of stuff.”, The plot to blow up Koeberg, Part 2: The man with the bombs. Chernobyl still functioned as a power station until the early 2000's using the other 3 undamaged reactors. function loadDoc() {var xhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhttp.onreadystatechange = function() { if (this.readyState == 4 && this.status == 200) { document.getElementById("pressoffice").innerHTML = this.responseText; }}; xhttp.open("GET", "https://mg.co.za/scripts/rss/pressofficeServer.php?menu=false&items=5&feed=http://pressoffice.mg.co.za/feed/rss2.php", true); xhttp.send();} loadDoc(); For all the latest information and advice from the Department of Health relating to Covid-19, please visit sacoronavirus.co.za. I wonder what Wilkingson thinks of the present state of the anc? The supporter of the anti-apartheid movement caused $519 million in damages. The ANC, whose ranks had been deeply infiltrated by Pretoria’s spies and had recently had one of their own agents jailed on charges of nuclear espionage, was initially suspicious of the “hippy” who had pitched up on their doorstep claiming to have penetrated what was assumed to be the most secure installation in South Africa. Wilkinson concealed the mines in a secret compartment in his Renault, drove on to the site, and from there carried the mines into the power plant concealed in his overalls. This is complicated because most of the material in and around the plant is radioactive to varying degrees and therefore dangerous to anything exposed to it. Please note you must be a Maverick Insider to comment. Yet on the rare occasions when the story has been told over the past four decades, it has largely been treated as frivolous: as a kind of white-boy caper, or a hippie prank that succeeded against the odds. Upon our arrival, he leapt into the road barefoot to welcome us. David Beresford tells the extraordinary story of how a young white South African couple, one a national sportsman, bombed the nuclear. Work shifts naturally were strictly monitored. Eskom (Pty) Ltd (Koeberg Nuclear Power Station) (Western Cape) Information removed as per PoPI Act. The first of Koeberg nuclear power station’s long-awaited six new replacement steam generators arrived at the plant yesterday. This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article "Koeberg_Nuclear_Power_Station" ; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. 2. Located in Koeberg “red zone” Another major regulatory loop that Wescape’s developers will have to jump through is permission to build a city of 800,000 residents within the 16km zone around Koeberg power station, an area where development is limited due to the need to evacuate the area if there is a nuclear emergency. It’s a joke. It is currently the only one on the entire African continent. He was taken aback by the request but agreed and returned to South Africa. Today, Wilkinson says he has no regrets. 1. Koeberg Nuclear Power Station Generating electricity at a nuclear power station When the word ‘nuclear’ is heard, people often think of atomic explosions or Fukushima. “I was never vetted for the job or the access to the nuclear island,” Wilkinson says. Removing advertising from your browsing experience is one of them - we don't just block ads, we redesign our pages to look smarter and load faster. The chosen weapons: limpet mines, which Wilkinson needed to be trained to install and detonate. He had ridden to safety on a bicycle across the Swazi border after being driven there by his sister. It was 1976, and Wilkinson had been called up again by the apartheid military after failing to appear for duty following extended travels after a Springbok fencing tour. They also do not pose a risk to the Koeberg Nuclear Power Station which was built to much higher earthquake and tsunami specifications than Japan’s Fukushima. Give him a bicycle and direct him to Luthuli House. explosives We encourage different, respectful viewpoints to further our understanding of the world. The incident was reported in the press and the ANC’s president-in-exile, Oliver Tambo — who was privy to the planned operation but not to details such as timing — released a statement claiming it as an ANC attack. Wilkinson was discharged and moved to Cape Town, where he lived on a commune near Paarl and tried to make a living teaching fencing before one of his pupils suggested he might use his skills as a trained draftsman to find employment at the construction of the Koeberg nuclear power station. All these years later, Wilkinson still seems curiously frustrated about the fact that his role in the Koeberg bombing was revealed at all. He says he would rather have remained anonymous to the end. Wilkinson was sold. Wilkinson and his ANC handlers had determined that they wanted the damage to Koeberg to be substantial and expensive to fix. Wilkinson was living on a commune near Koeberg. Wilkinson worked for 18 months at the plant. We had travelled to Knysna to hear Wilkinson tell his story in the wood-panelled house he is currently sharing with his 98-year-old mother. I was heavily involved with probabilistic risk assessment of the nuclear power plant, estimating risks, and providing insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the design and operation of a nuclear power plant. Articulos Sobre Energia Nuclear - Conceptos, Accidentes, Tipos de Reactor y Su Funcionamiento, Isotopos y Atomos On 16 December 1982, Rodney set four bombs inside the Koeberg nuclear power station in Cape Town. Thirty-eight years ago, Rodney Wilkinson committed the only act of nuclear terrorism ever carried out on the African continent. Select which newsletters you'd like to receive, MAVERICK INSIDERS CAN COMMENT. He might have entered the history books only as a Springbok fencer, had he not also blown up Cape Town’s nuclear power plant in 1982. Koeberg Nuclear Power Station has suffered substantial damage to its containment building, according to Koeberg Alert Alliance (KAA). “It was obvious from early on that there was no way we could permanently damage [Koeberg],” says Wilkinson. Thank you for documenting this astonishing part of South Africa’s struggle, and nuclear energy, histories so clearly! From there he had to carry them by foot into the main building, through a security gate, hidden in his overalls. “The best I could think of doing was to steal a set of plans and hand it over to someone who would do something,” Wilkinson says ruefully. Because of this a plant will only be dismantled years after it’s been switched off. In preparation for our visit, Wilkinson had laid out neat stacks of documents and photographs. To access all the information on our directory. Each power plant includes a reactor. By the time they detonated, causing at least R500 million (in 1982 value) of damage and delaying the Koeberg project for 18 months, Wilkinson was gone. They continued working for the ANC after a period of isolation, returning home following the unbanning of the liberation movement and release of Nelson Mandela. South Africa’s freshwater fish face extinction. ; Eskom says it has repaired the fault. The “political and ecological nastiness” of the Koeberg project was not to Wilkinson’s taste – but he decided he would take a job there with the express purpose of figuring out a way to sabotage it. An anecdote he delivers with some relish, which seems to capture the antic spirit of the young Rodney Wilkinson, is the tale of how he ended up leaving the army after three months because of a broken skull. A recently released Eskom document has revealed that 40 years of exposure to sea air at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station has damaged the concrete of the containment buildings, according to Koeberg Alert Alliance. We don’t want to evacuate Cape Town. • Design has to be updated for extending the life of the plant. A trip at the Koeberg nuclear power station, just outside of Cape Town, plunged South Africa into stage four loadshedding on Tuesday. “[Maharaj] told me some people are good at some things,” Wilkinson recalls, “other people are good at other things. The inside story of how the African National Congress made a mockery of atomic security to pull off one of the most dramatic coups of the apartheid struggle — blowing up the Koeberg nuclear power station near Cape Town in 1982 – — has been told by the young couple who carried out the attack. “I had access everywhere, even where I didn’t need it.”. All material © Mail & Guardian Online. After 18 months working at Koeberg, Wilkinson had not made much progress with a plan towards thwarting the apartheid regime’s nuclear aspirations. Early in the morning of April 26 1986, technicians at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin nuclear power plant started a safety test on one of its reactors. Sudáfrica es un país muy conocido a nivel internacional y en buena parte gracias a su turbulento pasado, donde se destaco por su gobierno del Apartheid, un sistema político de corte segregacionista racial completamente descolocado para la época en la que existió durante casi medio siglo. Another ANC usefull idiot who was fooled by the ANC master thieves of the peoples money on the basis of skewed self serving ideology………….. The date for the attack was set for December 16, the Day of the Covenant, which the ANC commemorated as MK Day in honour of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Everybody has an opinion but not everyone has the knowledge and the experience to contribute meaningfully to a discussion. The woman who was to become his wife, Heather Gray, encouraged Wilkinson to do just that, and to take the plans to the ANC leadership in exile in Zimbabwe. View our comments policy here. The chosen locations: the nuclear reactor heads, a section of the containment building and a cluster of electric cables under the main control room. He turned this scare to advantage — telling them that in the interim he had taken another job and would have to leave on December 17, thereby obtaining cover for his planned disappearance. But a combination of human error and design flaws caused an explosion that breached the reactor, sending huge amounts of deadly radiation into the surrounding areas. please consider taking out a subscription, More battles ahead for domestic worker unions, “Life has been good to me, considering where I come from” – Xolani Gwala, Kanya Cekeshe’s lawyer appeals decision not to grant him bail to the high court, Police Minister Bheke Cele addresses Jeppestown, Mabuyane targeted in Eastern Cape road debacle, LRA’s Ongwen: A critical first ICC conviction. Please sign in or register to enable this feature. The ANC appointed a guerrilla commander in Swaziland to act as Wilkinson’s handler. Encouraged by his girlfriend, Heather, he stole a set of Koeberg plans. Koeberg is owned and operated by the country's only national electricity supplier, Eskom. They honed down possible targets to the two reactor heads, another section of the containment building and a concentration of electric cabling under the main control room. The bombs were detonated just days before the plant went on stream and nobody was hurt in the explosion and ensuing fire. He was backed by his girlfriend, Heather Gray, a speech therapist – — whom he married soon after the bombing. Tambo claimed the Koeberg attack was an act of retaliation carried out by a MK unit. This predilection, mixed with his outrage at the brutality he witnessed being meted out to black South Africans on a daily basis, was to combine with a reckless anti-authority streak and a taste for danger that would one day lead him to enter Koeberg with four limpet mines concealed in his overalls. A third of our freshwater fish are dying out due to climate change and invasive species. On Saturday, at … Koeberg power station’s replacement steam generators arrive The trailer used to transport the steam generator is the longest in South Africa, coming in at 42 metres in length and requiring four trucks to transport each of the Steam Generators. But in fact it had been carried out by a former corporal in the South African Defence Force who made his escape from South Africa on a bicycle. Wilkinson was not the only one eyeing the Koeberg project with the aim of undermining it. His agility was a reminder that in his youth Wilkinson represented South Africa internationally in the sport of fencing.
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