Development of a strategic decision-making model for the South African nuclear sector

Abstract

The main objective of this research study was to develop a strategic decision-making model for the South African (SA) nuclear sector in response to lack of expansion. Since 1994, this lack of growth was marked by two failures of implementing pressurised water reactor (PWR) new builds and the third was the abandonment of the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) programme. Underlying and exacerbating the aforementioned stagnation are determined nuclear opponents who are vouching for variable renewables. The opponents buttress their opposition by highlighting nuclear new build cost overruns and the failure of the PBMR programme. Consequently, two specific research objectives were set and met. One was to demonstrate the reasoning behind having a model that is a combination of popular decision-making methods and SA’s historical, present and possible future nuclear facilities. The other was to demonstrate how the model can be employed to identify, collect, validate, archive, retrieve and operationalise nuclear programmes factors for strategic decision-making purposes. The iterative and integrative research design resulted in a novel generic hybrid decision-making model. The model entails the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), PESTEL (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and ten historical, present and possible future SA nuclear facilities (pressurised water reactor, small modular reactor, research reactor, uranium production, conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, reprocessing and recycling, spent fuel storage, spent fuel disposal). These model features demarcated the focus areas for literature review and data collection. By using the novel model’s data collecting and documenting instrument, data retrieving and case study instrument, validating secondary data as it was archived in the repository and LCA phases factor quantities, having a purposively and conveniently selected nuclear sector expert team participating in factor pairwise comparisons and using the AHP Expert Choice software computed factor priority weights and consistency ratios (CRs), it was established in descending order that public acceptance, private funding and political system threats factors were three of the twenty-one threats factors with the highest potential to impede the possible resumption of the SA PBMR programme. The validity of the participants’ pairwise comparison judgements was confirmed by the Consistency Ratios that were mostly <0.10 although it was also established that other similar study surveys accepted a measure <0.20. It was also found out that respectively, the three threats factors with highest potential to impede resonated profoundly with the informants more than likely due to (a) local anti-nuclear groupings successful court interdicts against PWR plant expansions; (b) the fact that towards its closure in 2010, the SA PBMR company failed to sign any off take agreements or to secure private funding; and (c) the fact that the SA energy debate has been transformed into a political partisan matter just like in other worldwide democracies. The use of public acceptance issues to inform nuclear new build strategic imperatives seems to be a commonality with similar international nuclear programme studies. Essentially, it was established that the model’s novel extraction and listing template was also ideal for measuring the degree of how much data was collected from individual research study design demarcated nuclear facilities areas. For future studies, it is proposed that the conceptual model be used to e.g., appraise the SA energy mix technologies and to further evaluate the SA PBMR programme using already extracted and appended strengths, opportunities and weaknesses factors.