Mr Speaker, hon members of the House, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to brief the House on a very difficult matter concerning the future of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, PBMR, project.
Without going into too much detail right now, after careful deliberation, analysis, review and being mindful of the fiscal constraints in these hard economic times, government has had to make a decision to no longer invest in this project. As a consequence, the scale and size of the company is being drastically reduced to a handful of people, with the focus being on the retention of its intellectual property and certain skills, and the preservation of its assets.
At the outset, let me emphasise that the decisions taken by government in this regard have not been taken lightly, neither are we unmindful of the regrettably big impact that these decisions will have on the future careers and livelihoods of PBMR employees - this has been uppermost in our minds. We have also not lost sight of the significant investment already made by government in this project. This includes the impressive scientific advances already achieved in pioneering this particular form of nuclear technology. We have had to counterbalance these weighty considerations against the following sobering realities.
The PBMR has still not been able to secure an anchor customer or another investment partner. Further investment in the project could well be in excess of an additional R30 billion.
The project has been consistently missing deadlines, with the construction of the first demonstration model delayed further and further into the future.
The opportunity afforded to PBMR to participate in the USA's Next Generation Nuclear Plant, NGNP, programme as part of the Westinghouse consortium, was lost in May this year when Westinghouse withdrew from that consortium.
Should South Africa embark on a nuclear build programme in the near future, it will not be using Pebble Bed technology, which is a Generation IV technology, that is, a technology that is still primarily in the research and design phase, but would have to consider options in Generations II and