Putin 'relaxed' about SA's nuclear about-turn
President Cyril Ramaphosa has told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that South Africa simply cannot afford a nuclear build programme.
Ramaphosa addressed the media after delivering the closing speech at the BRICS summit in Sandton on Friday.
Russia had been one of the countries vying to build new nuclear power reactors that would produce around 9.6 gigawatts of energy.
The deal with Russia was championed by former president Jacob Zuma in spite of concerns that it would be unaffordable given the country financial constraints.
Experts estimated that the deal would have cost the country in the region of R1 trillion.
"We have huge financial constraints, we are not able to proceed with a nuclear build programme," Ramaphosa told reporters during a question-and-answer session.
"President Putin was quite relaxed about this. He said you deal with your issues and when the situation changes we can keep talking about this. And that’s where we left it. So there’s no other hidden agenda."
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Ramaphosa said even though the government needs to focus on more pressing socio-economic issues at the moment, the nuclear deal could possible be revived sometime in the future.
"Right now, we are unable to afford any nuclear build programme because it is quite expensive. We are having to deal with a number of urgent priorities in relation to the needs of our people. And that is what we are focusing on.
"Fortunately, right now we still have an energy surplus. As our economy grows we will then be able to re-evaluate our situation going forward. So that answer was well-accepted."