In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said infrastructure spending by public enterprises was expected to grow strongly over the years ahead, "complemented by rising spending on public assets through public-private partnerships of various kinds".

Among significant projects he referred to were the "building of a demonstration plant by the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor company".

His support comes in the wake of the People's Budget which this week called for a scrapping of the project.

This view was presented at Parliament on Monday by the South African Council of Churches (SACC), the South African Non-Governmental Coalition (SANGOCO) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which is an alliance partner of the ANC.

They argued that resources could be better used to extend the electrification programme. "Government intends allocating R500-million to the PBMR. At the same time government has allocated slightly more than R1-billion in the 2004/05 financial year for the National Electrification Programme. The spending on the PBMR is almost half of the projected spending to achieve universal access," they said.

"The project involves high risks and unpredictably high costs with the prospect of limited returns. The current funding for the PBMR is only an initial cost. Estimates suggest an ultimate cost of around R10-billion for the pilot project," the various organisations said.

Recently Earthlife Africa won a stay on the construction of the pebble bed at Koeberg, after the Cape Town High Court ruled that there were certain irregularities concerning the environmental impact assessment procedure. The environmental affairs and tourism department has opted not to appeal this ruling, but it did not mean that the government does not wish that the programme should go ahead.

PBMR could be "long-term drain"

The organisations noted that the first commercial modules are only planned for 2013. "Moreover, once the plant is decommissioned, recurrent costs of storing nuclear waste remain with the possibility that future governments could bear this cost."

The PBMR "seems likely to become a long-term drain on public resources even though the potential returns of this experimental technology are uncertain". Eskom had planned that building would begin on the pilot PBMR at Koeberg, near Cape Town, in 2007.

Environmental Affairs and Tourism director general Chippy Olver has said the court's decision had "quite serious implications" for the environmental impact assessment process and it opened up "a seemingly endless round of consultations and judicial reviews. Government intended instead to address concerns through new EIA regulations which had already been published for public comment".