Orano warns of water shortage risk

Crisis looming
Erongo Region faces a looming water crisis, and Orano says it won't fix it alone
Ogone Tlhage
  • 7 Hours Ago

Namibia's central coast illustrates a familiar tension between private investment and public infrastructure. Orano, the French nuclear-fuel group, has told the government that it does not intend to expand the Erongo Desalination Plant, which it operates, beyond its present capacity of 22.5 million cubic metres a year. The reason is not reluctance but redundancy: a second plant, Erongo SUNAM Desalination, is already being built at the government's behest.


That N$2.1 billion project, sanctioned by Cabinet, will add a further 20 million cubic metres of capacity. For a country as arid as Namibia, where desalination underpins both municipal supply and industrial activity, the doubling of capacity is no small matter. It also signals a shift: infrastructure once left to mining companies as a cost of doing business is increasingly being reclaimed by the state.


Orano's own priorities lie elsewhere. The company has just detonated its first blast at Trekkopje, a uranium mine idled since 2013 amid a prolonged slump in uranium prices. That slump has since reversed, as nuclear power regains favour with governments seeking low-carbon electricity.


The blast is merely the start of a feasibility study, not a production decision. But it suggests that Orano, having offloaded responsibility for water expansion onto the state, is turning its attention back to the business it actually wants to be in: mining uranium.