South African Nuclear Energy Corporation's (Necsa) NTP production facility in Pelindaba, which produces medical nuclear radioisotopes and related products and services, has partially resumed operations after South Africa's National Nuclear Regulator (NNR) approved the restart.  

The facility is a major supplier of medical nuclear radioisotopes such as molybdenum-99 in Africa and one of only four such facilities in the world.  The plant was shut down in November 2017 for almost a full year because of lapses in safety procedures.  During that time, several attempts were made to restart the plant, but none were successful.  

The conflict between NTP and its parent company, Necsa, appears to have undermined the process of correcting deficiencies and bringing operational and safety procedures in line with NNR requirements.  

The problem was finally resolved after Energy Minister Jeff Radebe appointed Deputy Energy Minister Thembisile Majola to take over the NTP board from Necsa, making communication between NTP, Necsa and NNR more effective.  

Located at the Pelindaba nuclear Power plant near Pretoria, NTP uses the Safari-1 research reactor facility to produce nuclear radioisotopes from low-enriched uranium.  NTP is a wholly owned subsidiary of Necsa, a publicly traded, state-owned company that reports to the Department of Energy.  

NTP is one of only four companies in the world that produce medical nuclear radioisotopes, so the closure of the plant has led to shortages in South African government hospitals, which receive materials at subsidised prices, as well as in the global market for NTP services.  

It was first shut down in November 2017 due to a programming error.  The hydrogen sensor, an important part of the safety chain, did not appear to have been properly calibrated and records were not kept properly.  This was considered a key safety issue and the plant was shut down by the NNR.  

An investigation was carried out which led to the suspension of some NTP staff.  After numerous senior management and employee changes, suspensions and reinstatement, Necsa placed its own employees in charge of the plant, who then attempted to correct the problems and restart the production facility.  

NTP CTO Sumeshan Govender said that in the process, they "made a number of process, procedural and administrative changes to NTP's operations, which resulted in additional security incidents and the shutdown of the plant for over a year".  

According to Govender, the Necsa employees who replaced the NTP employees were well qualified but lacked in-depth knowledge of the Safari 1 reactor and related NTP production operations.  

Several events occurred that caused the restart to stop or abandon.  An example of this is various changes to parameters that have nothing to do with the cause of the problem.  Necsa's reasons for taking action in this regard are unclear.  

One of the major steps in the security chain is the change control process, which involves reviewing all changes to a program or equipment prior to implementation.  There are several stages of the review, including the operational impact and security of the entire process, and all issues must go through all stages before they can be implemented.  

According to Govender, Necsa personnel did not fully execute this process, resulting in unauthorized changes.  In addition, correct protocols were apparently not followed, resulting in failure of maintenance and maintenance strategies, lack of critical spare parts and other shortcomings.  

NTP revisited its website in July 2018 and by the end of August 2018, NTP said it had resolved all issues and was ready to submit an application to the NNR for a restart due to additional complexity and delays caused by further changes implemented by Necsa.  

NTP must submit all communications with NNR through Necsa, which holds a nuclear operator licence.  This is usually a simple delivery process.  But Necsa decided to establish its own review board, including Necsa personnel who were placed at NTP after the shutdown.  

This resulted in what the NTP considered to be an unnecessary step, as the NTP review should have been sufficient, and the change resulted in many "fruitless and meaningless" queries that delayed submission to the NNR.  

The situation, at least as far as the restart is concerned, was resolved in September 2018 when Deputy Energy Minister Thembisile Majola took over the NTP board from Necsa.  It is unclear whether Necsa's vetting process has been cancelled or whether this was simply circumvented in order to restart.  

Start-up testing and operations are now underway and full production will resume once the NNR approves the results.  If all goes well, it will take 18 to 24 months to regain its previous market position, according to NTP.  

According to Majola, both NTP and Necsa have highly qualified staff.  She said: "We have an outstanding legacy of expertise at the Necsa Group, which includes a new generation of highly skilled nuclear scientists and engineers.  "There is no doubting the ability of the staff who are currently running Safari 1."  

However, there is some doubt as to whether a second or alternative nuclear research reactor will be built following the announcement at the recent BRIC Summit in Sandton of a cooperation agreement between NTP and Rusatom, the nuclear medicine subsidiary of Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom, in the field of nuclear medicine.  

With the life of Pelindaba's Safari 1 reactor still between 15 and 20 years, the NTP said a second nuclear research reactor could not be justified by the current global surplus of medical radioisotopes, which could be extended further.  The Safari-1 reactor produces medical nuclear radioisotopes by bombarding low-enriched uranium targets with neutrons.  

In addition, medical nuclear radioisotopes can also be produced by particle accelerators such as cyclotrons, which could make the construction of a second or alternative nuclear research reactor unnecessary, the company said.  

There are also concerns about Necsa's financial health.  The Auditor General expressed continuing concern about the inadequacy of the financial allocation provided by Necsa for the decommissioning and dismantling costs of the Safari-1 reactor for scrapping.  

As a result, Necsa's financial statements for the year ended March 31, due by the end of September 2018, have still not been filed