South Africa is to build a second  nuclear power plant generating more than 1,000 megawatts of electricity, the government announced on Monday.
“The decision to build a second plant has been taken,” Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin told reporters in Cape Town.
“We hope to take a decision on the preferred bidder in the first quarter of this year.” South Africa has one nuclear power station at Koeberg near Cape Town, producing about six percent of the country’s electricity. South Africa is  a uranium producer, but enriched uranium for Koeberg is imported from France.
The government announced last year it was probing the viability of a uranium enrichment programme, stressing it had no intention of developing nuclear weapons.
 South Africa dismantled its nuclear weapons programme in the early  1990s during its transition from white minority rule to a democratic state.
The country, which has defended Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Erwin said nuclear energy formed part of a broad effort to secure energy supply in a country recently plagued by power outages in big cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town.
The country was also developing a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor.
mlr/co/awb