The suspension of senior managers at Eskom’s Koeberg nuclear power plant followed closely on the filing of court papers in the Constitutional Court in which Toshiba subsidiary Westinghouse said Eskom had made false claims in the two companies’ battle over a R5bn tender, notes a Business Day report. In the battle between Eskom and winning bidder Areva, the French nuclear company, on one side, and loser Westinghouse over the tender to replace six steam generators at Koeberg, one of the hotly disputed issues is whether a delay to their installation would pose a nuclear safety risk or would put the national grid at risk.

On Friday, Westinghouse asked the Constitutional Court to admit into evidence a letter reportedly signed by the GM of Koeberg. If the letter, which allegedly contradicts Eskom claims in its papers before the court, is admitted, it could have a big effect on the outcome of the case and, ultimately, to which company the tender is awarded.

Eskom announced on Wednesday it had placed the Koeberg Power Station manager and the plant manager on ‘precautionary suspension’ – because of the distribution of documentation that contained ‘unauthorised facts and assumptions’ relating to ‘in particular, the steam generator replacement’. Eskom’s attorney, Titus Mchunu, said Eskom would oppose the application to admit the letter.

Full Business Day report

See also a Daily Maverick report

The managers suspended at Eskom’s Koeberg nuclear plant have been named as Riedewaan Bakardien and Kevin Engel in a new affidavit filed by nuclear company Westinghouse in the Constitutional Court yesterday (Thursday), notes a BDlive report.

In yesterday’s affidavit, Westinghouse linked the recent suspensions at the power utility – announced on Wednesday – to the letter, saying it was prepared by Bakardien and signed on his behalf by Engel. Westinghouse’s Frederik Wolvaardt said Bakardien and Engel held the positions referred to in Eskom’s press release on the suspensions. When the case was argued before the Constitutional Court, Eskom said the current steam generators were fast approaching the end of their lifespan and needed to be replaced in a production outage scheduled for 2018.

It argued that even if the court were to find that the tender should have been awarded to Westinghouse (as had been decided by the SCA), it should leave in place the award to Areva for the sake of safety and of the national grid. But Bakardien’s letter, dated 21 July, which seems to contradict this argument, deals with a revision to Koeberg’s scheduled maintenance outages, saying the steam generator replacement project had ‘not been assigned to any specific outage’.

Instead, it would be scheduled into the next available outage once there was clarity on the steam generator replacement schedule.

Full BDlive report