Industrialization Guidelines for South Africa's Pebble Bed Modular Nuclear Reactor Programme

The industrialization of any new technical system requires the establishment of the required industrial infrastructure and supplier base for the system. This chapter presents a new methodology that was used for determining industrialization guidelines for South Africa's Pebble Bed Modular Nuclear Reactor (PBMR) programme. The methodology consists of a number of steps. These were a survey of the required industrial capabilities and an audit of current domestic industrial capabilities. In the next step, the strategic and operational requirements of the programme, current and future market conditions and domestic industrial capabilities were evaluated and the scores were combined to calculate the recommended industrialization guidelines. There were four possible outcomes or guidelines that this methodology could produce: local procurement, overseas procurement, partnership procurement, or competitive procurement, A panel of experts using a modified Delphi technique did the evaluation. It was found that the PBMR systems, sub-systems, units and components should be procured from different sources. However, the option of open international tenders where price is the primary criterion was not the favored option for any of the items considered.