A Erwin: Damaged Koeberg unit

17 August 2006

The events at Koeberg and consequently in the Western Cape as a whole have
been of great public interest. This is very understandable given the importance
of reliable electricity supply in our daily lives. Much has happened over the
last seven months or so and we have all learnt a great deal from the events.
The common bolt has become a public celebrity and this Minister for one has
come to regard that self-same common bolt with a degree of caution. The
coincidence of the incident and a local government election of 2006 did little
to make matters easy.

On 14 March 2006 at a presentation to a joint meeting of the Energy, Public
Enterprises and Science and Technology Portfolio Committees I made a commitment
to make a statement to Parliament on the investigations into the incident.
Today is the occasion for me to make such a statement on the matter.

However, before I start let me set out what can and cannot be said in such a
statement. Firstly, I shall not comment on individual persons who may have been
the subject of any investigation. To do so in the absence of any formal charge
laid against them would be an absolutely unacceptable action. Secondly, I will
not comment on employees who may be subject to any internal procedures in the
company for the same reasons. Thirdly I will not disclose information that may
have operational and security implications for Koeberg or the transmission
system. Finally this statement deals with the damage to the Unit One generator
and not the wider position of the electricity supply in the Western Cape or the
recently released Nuclear Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA) Report which
does not relate to this specific incident at Koeberg.

Having said this I am entirely satisfied that exhaustive investigation has
been undertaken into all aspects of the relevant incidents and that every
possible lesson we can glean from the events has been extracted and remedies
applied where necessary. Essentially three investigations have taken place, one
was by the police and the security services into the possibility of this being
a deliberate act, or some form of more organised action of sabotage; the second
was by Eskom itself in accordance with its well developed procedures and the
third was that required of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa
(NERSA). The Nuclear Energy Regulator has at all times been involved in the
monitoring of re-commissioning of units. I should however stress that all the
incidents referred to occurred outside the nuclear core and there was no impact
on the safety of the Koeberg reactor core.

Let me also clarify that the NERSA Report that is referred to in the media
deals with a series of events related to the Grid and not to the operation of
Unit one. What I am dealing with today is the failure of the generator in Unit
one. Eskom's comments on the NERSA Report are available to those interested and
I as Minister will allow the interaction between Eskom and NERSA to continue as
I do not see it as appropriate for me to comment on this matter in the press. I
will also deal with the issues in the appropriate manner that accord with the
standing of the Regulator and its mandate, which I entirely support.

All the studies mentioned above were completed some weeks back but as we had
undertaken to do, we waited for the opportunity to address Parliament. However,
where action had to be taken this was done with immediate effect.

Today I will deal with the investigation around the possibility of
deliberate action. Later today Eskom will release a summary of its findings and
NERSA has already released its Report.

The Sequence of events

Let us begin by reminding ourselves of the sequence of events. On 25
December 2005 the No one Unit at Koeberg tripped. This was followed by a number
of outages and load shedding operations in the following weeks and months. A
particularly serious and inopportune event occurred on 27 February 2006. Being
the day before the Local Government Elections this attracted immense public
interest and Minister Lindiwe Hendricks and I addressed a press conference in
Pretoria.

During this time strenuous efforts were made to secure the supply of a spare
rotor, which, thanks to government-to-government co-operation with France, was
successful and the rotor arrived aboard the SAS Drakensberg in Cape Town on 5
April 2006.

On 3 March 2006 Eskom announced a recovery programme and the Energy Risk
Management Committee under the leadership of Premier Ebrahim Rasool and MEC
Tasneem Essop brought together the levels of government, organised business and
agriculture, other civil society organisations and Eskom. It was the work of
this Committee that then proceeded to transform the situation and eventually
was able to minimise the impact of the occurrences at Koeberg, particularly in
the middle of winter 2006.

On 17 May 2006 Unit one was reconnected to the National Grid, going into
full output on 21 May 2006 and on 24 July Unit two completed its refuelling
process.

The cause of the damage in the generator

This question has caused massive public interest. Of as much interest has
been whether I said that this was an act of sabotage. I did not say this and
all attempts I made to our erudite media to say what I did say merely got me
into deeper linguistic difficulties. Why I deliberately did not say it was
sabotage will be evident as we progress with this statement.

The actual events are clear and now very well understood. When the generator
was opened up a bolt was found in it. This bolt should not have been there, it
was of a type that was used outside and not inside the generator and the Clean
Conditions Controls had been implemented they but had clearly not prevented it
being within the generator. This was an obvious cause of concern.

The CEO of Eskom immediately alerted me to these findings and on the basis
of initial information from Eskom security we authorised a full Eskom security
investigation and I requested Minister Kasrils to initiate an investigation by
our security agencies. The South African Police Services (SAPS), working with
the Eskom security were a full part of the investigation.

At an early stage the existence of some discontent on the part of certain
employees who were involved in the refuelling operation was identified and
thoroughly investigated. Immediately prior to the major outage on 27 February
there were a number of unauthorised communications from Eskom employees to
outside parties. These two factors required particular attention. This prima
facie information that could have provided a motive was a matter of concern for
some weeks into the investigation. A claim by some group that they were
responsible was, however, quickly refuted by the evidence at hand.

Given the severity of the outage on 27 February the Minister of Mineral and
Energy and I held a press conference the following day to set out the facts of
the outage. The prime focus of the media understandably focussed on the
sensational aspect of whether this was sabotage and it was implied that the
Ministers were alleging this to avoid electoral problems the following day. Let
me assure this House that the primary and sole focus of our actions was to
ensure that we dealt with a major energy problem. Attempting to score political
points in such a situation is a futile exercise.

It also became evident that there was another magnetic substance or
substances associated with the bolt that may in fact have been more damaging.
This too had to be exhaustively analysed. The Eskom investigation has been
thorough in examining records.

Summary

With regard to the damage to the generator I therefore wish to state the
following on the basis of the investigations and all the information available
to me: There is no evidence of any organised group of any sort being the agent
of an act of sabotage at Koeberg. The word sabotage generally conveys such
organised action by a group and our initial concern was to eliminate such a
serious possibility. It was also why I did not use the word sabotage as we had
to verify the existence or otherwise of a group before any such word was
appropriate. The non-existence of any such group has now been conclusively
established.

We are unable to conclusively establish whether the presence of the bolt and
other foreign substance was a deliberate act despite prima facie indications.
Accordingly we share the view of the Eskom CEO that we have to ascribe this to
human error.

What was detected post facto were operational weaknesses in the Clean
Conditions Controls applied at that time. These previously used procedures have
been amended for all future operations. That no employees in Koeberg are the
subject of suspicion and that both the Minister of Intelligence and I see no
benefit in continuing the investigation as we believe it has exhausted all
possibilities available to the investigators. The Eskom investigation reaches
the same conclusion.

Any breach of procedure by Eskom employees is being dealt with by internal
disciplinary procedures and accordingly I will make no comment on these. A wide
range of more specific and technical matters is dealt with in the other two
reports referred to. Eskom acknowledges weakness and inadequacies in the
implementation of procedures that the incidents have shown up and NERSA makes
certain findings in relation to the impact on the Grid. As I have indicated
where action has to be taken on the basis of these reports or findings, Eskom
is dealing with these matters.

Members wishing to obtain more detailed information on the Eskom report
should access the Department of Public
Enterprise (DPE) and Eskom web pages.

Conclusion

All accidents are a problem, the more so if investigation shows that they
could have been relatively easily prevented. However, I am satisfied in my mind
that the investigations show that the events at Koeberg could not have been
foreseen or easily prevented. Fault cannot be easily attributed to one or more
persons. What has emerged is that procedures will have to be further refined to
try and address even the unusual configuration of events that did occur. Eskom
has a proud record of safety and has already changed procedures to attain even
higher levels of such safety.

I am also satisfied that our concerns at the outset were justified but
accept that the investigations have established the position as far as we can
and that the matter should not be taken further other than indicated here where
remedial actions are being taken. In addition we have reassessed the long term
supply security of the Western Cape and will strengthen that security in the
coming years. One very stark lesson we have learnt is that by serious
cooperation between all parties we can achieve very real savings in electricity
demand. This lesson has to be built on.

The damage that unreliable electricity can do to our economy has been amply
demonstrated. Eskom's ability to provide a secure electricity supply in the
future has been enhanced by these unfortunate events.

I would like to end by thanking all those in the Western Cape that endured
hardship for the way that they pulled together to minimise the damage after the
initial period, this was an amazing achievement. My thanks to Premier Rasool
and his Provincial Government for their massive effort and cooperation and to
the City of Cape Town and RED 1 for the same hard work. Finally thanks to the
Board and all in Eskom for rallying together behind a very visible and tireless
CEO Thulani Gcabashe as the organisation grappled with a real crisis.

Issued by: Department of Public Enterprise
17 August 2006
Source: Department of public Enterprise (http://www.dpe.gov.za)