The South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) expects to identify a partner within the next year for a planned demonstration small modular reactor (SMR), as it steps up efforts to revive local nuclear technology development and expand the country’s future nuclear generation capacity.

CEO Loyiso Tyabashe said at the Africa Energy Forum in Cape Town on Tuesday that Necsa had already issued an expression of interest to the market and hoped to select a development partner “by this time next year”.

The demonstration reactor forms part of South Africa’s longer-term nuclear ambitions and is intended to showcase SMR technology that could eventually be deployed more widely across the country and the African continent.

The Integrated Resource Plan 2025 (IRP) envisages an additional 5 200 MW of nuclear generation capacity, which together with the existing Koeberg nuclear power station would take South Africa’s nuclear fleet to about 7 000 MW by 2039.

The planned demonstration SMR is expected to play a role in that future build programme.

“The IRP puts that demonstration reactor on line by 2032,” Tyabashe said. “We don’t have much time.”

Necsa sees the project as a stepping stone towards the eventual deployment of SMRs at sites currently occupied by coal-fired power stations as those plants are retired.

The reactors could help Eskom decarbonise its generation fleet while maintaining reliable baseload power supply, Tyabashe said.

South Africa also intended positioning itself as a developer and manufacturer of nuclear technology rather than merely an importer, he added.

Tyabashe referenced the country’s earlier Pebble Bed Modular Reactor programme, which has since been transferred to Necsa after years in care and maintenance.

“There was an attempt earlier on in the form of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor,” he said. “We will see how we can pull those together and come up with a proudly South African SMR.”

Tyabashe also outlined plans to expand South Africa’s participation across the nuclear fuel value chain. Necsa is positioning itself to become a strategic supplier of nuclear fuel for future domestic reactor deployments and potentially for export markets.

The organisation is pursuing projects covering uranium conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication, which would support research reactors and future commercial nuclear power stations.

Tyabashe said the work was being undertaken in collaboration with Eskom to ensure South Africa developed the industrial capability required to support a larger nuclear fleet.

The comments come amid growing international support for nuclear energy. He noted that nuclear power had increasingly been recognised as a clean-energy technology within global sustainable-finance frameworks and pointed to recent policy shifts by major international institutions.

Tyabashe also cited growing international support for tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050, arguing that the trend was creating favourable conditions for countries seeking to expand their nuclear industries.

“We have an international framework that is very conducive to nuclear energy,” he said.

For South Africa, Tyabashe argued, nuclear development should be viewed not only as an energy-security intervention, but also as part of a broader industrialisation strategy aligned with the continent's long-term development ambitions.