Cape Town’s N-jitters amid P-boom

As Capetonians and those who hate Koeberg ponder Eskom’s admission that there were four radiation-related incidents at the nuclear power plant between June 30 and July 16, I am reminded of a South African nuclear physicist who once said that he would feel safer, in radioactive terms, having a holiday cottage on top of the reactor housing than among the sun-baked granite boulders at Clifton.

Eskom points out that the incidents, which occurred during tests at Koeberg’s currently offline unit 2, were classified as level 0, or of no safety significance. But so spooked are humans about Fukushima, Chernobyl and other incidents (not to mention the still-fresh memory of large-scale incompetence on the part of the national electricity provider) that any hint of a radiation leak has at least some locals ruminating about the quickest, least clogged highway out of town in an emergency.

Which, being Cape Town, means that should there ever be a major Chernobyl-scale accident at Koeberg, leaving by road will look like a scene from The Day After, but with only one take.

Back to holiday homes because the biggest boom in town is the property market, playing like the 1980s David & David ballad Welcome to the Boomtown, with all that money making such a succulent sound as foreigners with eager eyes continue to hoover up coastal homes.

Scarborough, the last town on the road to Cape Point, may or may not now be largely foreign-owned, depending on who’s doing the telling. Scarborough is 58km as the northwester blows from Koeberg, so it would be interesting to hear how the new residents feel about the recent incidents — if they heard about them at all.

Meanwhile, absent a meltdown in the market or any other calamity such as the much, much greater possibility of the city running out of water, investors (and sellers) can look forward to a thoroughly decent ROI. Boomtown indeed.