Eskom’s Koeberg is offline

A unit at South Africa’s sole nuclear power facility unexpectedly tripped, taking the whole facility offline and further stretching the supply to the nation’s already-constrained grid. 

Unit 2 at the Koeberg facility in Cape Town “experienced an unplanned, non-technical trip while operating at full capacity,” state-owned utility Eskom said in a statement Sunday.

It said the reactor would reconnect to the national grid within 48 hours. 

Unit 1 is offline for work that’s part of a so-called long-term operation program, Eskom said. Together, the reactors are capable of delivering about 1,940 megawatts to the network. 

“While the trip did not necessitate the implementation of load shedding, which remains suspended, Eskom acknowledges that overall, generation capacity remains constrained,” it said, using the local term for rolling blackouts. 

South Africa’s nuclear regulator in July gave Eskom permission to run Unit 1 for another two decades as the electricity supply remains fragile.

The decision is a relief for the utility, whose mostly coal-fired plants are prone to breakdowns that trigger scheduled power cuts that hinder the economy.  

Last weekend, Eskom took 6,000 megawatts of power supply offline, the most stringent power cuts in a year after multiple generating units at the state utility failed, raising questions about the turnaround in the company’s performance.