Koeberg Nuclear Energy Plant – the lost bid of Rijn-Schelde-Verolme (RSV)
The Dutch Rhine-Schelde-Verolme originally put in a bid to build the Koeberg Nuclear Power plant. We in the AABN became aware of this in late 1975 when we were given documents by a member of the Dutch Labour Party pertaining to the need for Verolme to get an export license from the Dutch government for the deal. All was sealed and dried on paper but everything depended on this final piece of paperwork. That license never came from the Den Uyl government and the South African government gave the contract to a French consortium instead.
In May 1976 the U.S.’s and the Dutch RSV bids were dropped and a French consortium Framatag took over the building of Koeberg. The turbine generator sets were supplied by another French multinational corporation, Alstom. Construction was completed in 1984 and for the past 25 years Koeberg is able to supply 7% of South Africa’s electricity supply. In the past years Koeberg has been plagued by technical problems leading to national load shedding as it appeared tat power generation in South Africa was lacking to increasing demand.
The action to stop Dutch companies from building Koeberg was politically motivated. Verolme was already on the AABN’s radar since it became known that it was also being contracted to construct harbor facilities at Saldanha. RSV already had an interest in the development of the port facility and bought up land at Saldanha in 1968.
Dealing with RSV’s potential participation in Koeberg presented the Sanctions Task Team with an interesting dilemma. It exemplified everything about “payback time” for the movement’s accepting of funding from the Labour Party government. RSV was highly controversial for a number of years. It was an interesting precursor developments a couple of decades later as so-called “third world” countries getting into shipbuilding and at cheaper prices than in Europe. RSV asked for a government bail out in which the Dutch trade union was in support. Jobs were at stake. At the same time the position of the right wing Minister of Finance, van Ardenne, was also at stake. It appeared that the bailout of RSV to the tune of Dfl 2 billion was riveted together by compromises, bad management and fraud for which van Ardenne became the fall guy. We therefore had the unusual situation of having to throw the weight of the movement in the equation to annul RSV’s Koeberg deal for internal political reasons.
The AABN complied but the Dutch Labour Party was able to achieve what it sought to achieve as Prime Minister den Uyl refused to sign the export license RSV required. This was a nasty blow for RSV as the Koeberg project was worth billions and represented a life line for the distressed corporation.
Interesting is that the discussions within the Sanctions Task Team prefigured impending globalization with competition for jobs between rich and poor countries. But in the case of South Africa the arguments indeed became contorted. It is a known fact that the British Labour government participated directly in the AAM with the understanding that consumer boycotts would not impinge con British jobs. As Britain was number one supplier of South Africa’s number one import, industrial machinery, it is clear that the very imperialism we set out to confront was being achieved under our very noses. South Africa was to maintain its raw material export and industrial import trade economy which in itself was worsening social inequality without its racial crutches.
http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/6/0/0/7/pages60074/p60074-1.php
No comments:
Post a Comment