They worked under the same roof at PBMR (Pty) Ltd’s head office in Centurion, South Africa: some of the world’s leading nuclear scientists, engineers and other specialists. They were going to build the world’s first commercial High Temperature Reactor.
Alas, when the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor project was closed down in October 2010, they were snatched up by nuclear companies all over the globe. Most of them have obtained citizenship of their respective new countries and are lost to South Africa for ever. Here are some of their stories:
Frederik Reitsma
When his PBMR consulting came to an end, Frederik obtained a full-time position with the Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, where he was promoted as the Team Leader for Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) Technology Development in 2018.
When his time at the IAEA ended in September 2020 due to the association’s 7-year rotation policy, he joined the leading micro SMR power plant project for deployment in Canada, the Micro Modular Reactor (MMRTM). It is under development by the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), a new global technology company with its headquarters in Seattle, Washington.
USNC offered him the position of Director of Analysis, allowing him to apply all the knowledge and experience acquired over 30 years from the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa), the PBMR project and the IAEA. Since the Covid-19 pandemic has showed that one could work from any place in the world, Frederik joined USNC France and relocated to a small village in the Pyrenees mountains where his wife, Erika , is running a B&B with her twin sister and family. They are planning to stay in France for the foreseeable future.
Hanno van der Merwe
Hanno had a short stint in Idaho before moving to Belgium where he wrote the fuel licensing for SCK-CEN’s MYRRHA project (some of his former PBMR colleagues, amongst whom Diana Naidoo, Graham Kennedy and Emre Sikik, were also at SCK-CEN at the time). In 2012, the family visited New-Zeeland for a short holiday, fell in love with the country and decided to stay.
Hanno worked for four years for a fertiliser company where he developed products for NZ agriculture, after which the family moved to Whakatane where Hanno’s wife, a chemical engineer, accepted an employment offer. Hanno now works for the local industrial district council as a civil engineer and manages the district’s civil operations and infrastructure. He and his wife now have NZ citizenship and plan to stay in New-Zeeland.
Isabella van Rooyen
“I joined Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in May 2011, so I have been working for INL for a full 10 years! Work has been fun with very good opportunities, but the weather is not closely as enjoyable. Luckily, snow over Christmas with the lights are still a wonderful experience. We are also blessed to be US citizens. We miss our family in South Africa, and visit and virtual communicate to keep touch, but we carved our new life here. All three my children got US degrees now and are settled.”
(Isabella’s husband Philip, also a previous PBMR employee, also works for NuScale Power).
Gerhard Strydom
Gerhard and his wife have been in Idaho Falls since 2010. “The winters are too cold for us (we’ve been down to -32C and up to +39C) to really get used to,” he says, “but we otherwise like the outdoor options such as hiking, snowshoeing and great motorcycling roads.”
He says his wife can do her favorite thing, Arabian horse endurance riding, with miles of trails available around them. Their son Sean was born in 2014 and is a lively “Idaho boytjie”. Their Ridgeback female dog which came with them 11 years ago, is also still with them. Gerhard says they would eventually like to move to warmer pastures, but since they are now citizens, there’s no rush. “All our family is back in SA and we miss them immensely, but we will never go back. That ship has sailed.”
Marisa van der Walt
Marisa, an Engineering Manager on the PALLAS reactor Project in Alkmaar, has been in the Netherlands for six and a half years. She says the PALLAS reactor is mainly a production reactor that will produce medical radioisotopes for therapeutic and diagnostic uses. Also, the reactor needs to enable research to support nuclear energy developments. They are currently in the design stage of the project. She has recently received Dutch citizenship and her “home and heart” are now in the Netherlands.
Zain Karriem
Zain obtained a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering at the Pennsylvania State University in 2012 after which he took a position as a Nuclear Engineer with NuScale Power. In 2014 he and his wife, Veronica, who had also completed her MS degree in Nuclear Engineering, decided to return to South Africa to be close to family and also perhaps make a meaningful contribution to the nuclear industry.
In 2014 he took a position with Necsa in the Radiation and Reactor Theory Group, the same group that he started back in 1999. “South Africa had, however, changed quite a bit in our absence,” he says. “Our kids, who were South African, had spent more of their lives in the US and had difficulty acclimating to life in SA.”
Due to this and other reasons, the family went back to the US where Zain took a position with Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to work on the LEU conversion (conversion to low-enriched uranium fuel) of the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR). “Looking back, I was basically imported to the US as there was a shortage in the technical skills I possessed, and which were crucial for the ATR LEU conversion project. I worked on this project and other projects while at INL from 2015 to 2020.”
During this time, he had become a US permanent resident. In 2020 he accepted an offer as Senior R&D staff in the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). His work includes the production and development of medical and industrial radioisotopes.
The family lives in Knoxville Tennessee, where Veronica is presently a post-doctorate scholar in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, working in advanced small nuclear reactor design. “The chances that we would return to live in South Africa are very unlikely, but SA will always be home to me.”
Eric Beyer
Eric, who works for X-Energy, is a permanent resident of Canada and has applied for Canadian citizenship. He is the project manager of test facilities that will be built to test, qualify, and validate critical components of the Xe-100 reactor.
Wilna Geringer
I started at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in December 2014. My current focus is on nuclear irradiated material studies and managing nuclear irradiated material programs (like graphite and steels) for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Technologies and Fusion Material programs. I also have High Temperature Reactor involvement with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and specialize on nonmetallic core components (such as graphite and composites). I don’t have US citizenship, but I’m in process for residency. Returning to South African really depends on the opportunities and circumstances. All my family members are back in South Africa.
Emre Sikik
I left South Africa in 2011, but still think of the country as my real home. As much as I love South Africa, it seems like I am permanent in Belgium. My wife and I are both happy at our jobs and our kids are happy too. I really believed PBMR would be an example for all African countries and – as Eben Mulder rightly points out – could have been a cure for economical slavery.
Former PBMR employees now working overseas:
- Susan Abraham, computer engineer in Melbourne, Australia;
- Eric Beyer, test and qualification manager, X-energy, Macklin, Saskatchewan, Canada;
- Derick Botha, Innovation Manager, NuScale Power, Corvallis, Oregon, USA;
- Dr Gerrit Botha, Thermodynamic Analyst: Xe-100 Nuclear Systems at X-energy, Rockville, Maryland, USA;
- Dr Riaan Bredell, Senior Manager, Government Risk, Compliance and Assurance at Ansto, Sydney, Australia;
- Yvotte Brits, Senior Nuclear System engineer, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Dr Ivor Clifford, System Behaviour group leader at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Zurich, Switzerland;
- Mark Davies, Vice-President Fuel at USNC, Warrington, England;
- Josina (Wilna) Geringer, Nuclear Materials Research Projects, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA;
- Holger Finken, Fuel Handling Systems Engineer, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Fred Fortier, Plant Systems Engineer at PALLAS reactor, Broek op Langedijk, Netherlands;
- Dr Hans Gougar, Manager, Product Engineering, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Andries Haasbroek, Lead Systems Engineer, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Jeff Harper, Vice President, Strategy and Business Development, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Dr Zain Karriem, Senior Research and Development Staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Knoxville, Tennessee;
- Graham Kennedy, Head of Nuclear Technology Engineering at SCK-CEN, Antwerp, Belgium;
- Willem Kriel, Design Manager, X-Energy, Maryland, USA;
- Mark Mitchell, Executive Vice President, Commercial Power Division and President USNC power, Seattle, Washington State, USA;
- Dr Eben Mulder, X-energy’s Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer, Rockville, Maryland;
- Francois Laubscher, Director, SimGenics, Grand Junction, Colorado;
- Frans Meintjes, Director, EPMO – Process & Standards at Westinghouse Electric Company, Overijse, Belgium;
- Kobus Naude, Strategy analysis, management and business modelling, Sydney Water, Australia;
- Diana Naidoo, Head of Department Reactor and Safety at Beznau NPP, Aargau, Switzerland;
- Theo Odendaal, Director Safety, Health, Environment & Quality at X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Dr Dirk Olivier, Senior Technical Consultant, X-Energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Kurt Prinsloo, Spent Fuel Storage Systems Engineer, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Martin Sage, Head of Severe Accident Analysis, Nawah Energy Company, UAE;
- Sonat Sen, Reactor Core Design and Methods Lead, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Emre Sikik, Reactor core design engineer at Belgian Reactor 2 (BR2) in Antwerp, Belgium;
- Dr Gerhard Strydom, National Technical Director for the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Development Gas-Cooled Reactors campaign, Idaho, USA;
- Dr Hanno van der Merwe, Manager Operations and Services, Kawerau District Council, New-Zeeland;
- Dr Martin van Staden, Vice President, Design Engineering, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Dr Herman van Antwerpen, Analysis Manager, X-energy, Rockville, Maryland;
- Reneé van den Berg, Consultant at VDB & Associates, Perth, Australia;
- Marisa van der Walt, Engineering Manager PALLAS reactor Project, Alkmaar, Netherlands;
- Alex Matev, safety analyst at BelV in Brussels, Belgium;
- Dr Cobus van Rensburg, Senior Project Manager, Nuclear, Mining and Essential Infrastructure for Hatch, Mississauga Ontario, Canada;
- Dr Isabella van Rooyen, National Technical Director for Advanced Methods for Manufacturing Programs for the Department of Energy-Nuclear Energy Enabling Technologies, Idaho, USA;
- Philip van Rooyen, Software Configuration Management Engineer, NuScale Power, Corvallis, Oregon, USA.
