The proposed 4 000MW undertaking can be constructed at Duynefontein subsequent to the present Koeberg nuclear energy station close to Cape City.
Picture: David Harrison
Three environmental justice organisations have launched a excessive court docket problem in opposition to the environmental authorisation granted for Eskom’s proposed Nuclear-1 energy station, arguing that the approval breached obligatory necessities of South Africa’s environmental impression evaluation (EIA) legal guidelines.
The proposed 4 000MW undertaking can be constructed at Duynefontein subsequent to the present Koeberg nuclear energy station close to Cape City.
The Southern African Religion Communities’ Atmosphere Institute (Safcei), Greenpeace Africa and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg described Nuclear-1 as a “zombie” undertaking, which is being revived almost twenty years after the environmental approval course of started in 2007.
The environmental authorisation was granted in 2017 and appeals in opposition to it have been dismissed solely in 2025, after a protracted course of. The organisations are asking the excessive court docket to declare the environmental authorisation and the minister’s enchantment resolution illegal and set them apart.
In November 2025, former setting minister Dion George introduced that he had upheld the 2017 resolution granting Eskom environmental authorisation. On the time, George mentioned he had fastidiously reviewed the EIA report and the impartial peer evaluation carried out for the undertaking.
“Ultimately, my resolution was made in respect of the rules of the [National Environmental Management] Act and with full appreciation of the environmental, social and financial issues concerned,” George mentioned.
He additionally emphasised that the authorisation didn’t routinely allow Eskom to start development; the utility should acquire different statutory approvals, together with a nuclear set up licence, water use licence and power regulator approval.
Nevertheless, the civil society teams warned that nuclear tasks of that scale may contain capital commitments operating into a whole lot of billions of rand, doubtlessly exceeding R1 trillion, with implications for electrical energy tariffs and taxpayers.
Arguing that the environmental authorisation breached EIA legal guidelines, their key considerations have been that decision-makers had not carried out a project-specific evaluation of the station’s necessity or desirability; renewable power alternate options weren’t correctly thought of; and the choice of not continuing was not meaningfully evaluated.
The EIA had additionally allegedly failed to completely study the potential environmental, well being and socio-economic penalties of a catastrophic nuclear incident.
“The granting of the EIA for the Duynefontein website 17 years after it was initially submitted is a resurrection of a nuclear power plan that ought to have been shelved greater than a decade in the past,” mentioned Francesca de Gasparis, the chief director of Safcei.
“What we’re witnessing now could be a ‘zombie’ revival of that very same plan — with out transparency, correct parliamentary oversight, financial justification or significant public participation.”
Cynthia Moyo, the local weather and power campaigner for Greenpeace Africa, added: “It’s basically unjust to saddle South Africans and future generations with the monetary danger, radioactive waste and catastrophic accident potential of an enormous nuclear undertaking when safer, faster and extra reasonably priced renewable power choices can be found at the moment.”
Local weather justice, Moyo mentioned, meant defending communities from pointless danger and debt and “not locking the nation into many years of expensive infrastructure that advantages the few whereas burdening the numerous”.
Lesai Seema, the director of Cullinan and Associates, the authorized consultant for the teams, mentioned it was “delighted to help these organisations” in guaranteeing that selections with long-term penalties for hundreds of thousands of South Africans have been taken in accordance with the regulation.
“A dedication to spend billions on nuclear energy vegetation should adjust to nationwide laws and reckon actually with its environmental, social and financial penalties for current and future generations.”
