Every Friday morning, SAfm's AMLive's radio anchor Jeremy Maggs speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday's At the Coalface transcript:

Maggs: Firstly, the Americans, you say, and the French are fighting it out for a share of South Africa's lucrative nuclear power business.

Creamer: Yes, Eskom is planning to spend a R100-billion initially on building up its nuclear programme and keen to get a slice of that are the French in the form of Areva and the Americans in the form of Westinghouse. Areva has had a long-standing association with Alstom of Boksburg, which is actually now a black-controlled company that manufactures a wide spectrum of products used in the industry, so they will be in quite a good position. Also, of course, their involvement in Koeberg puts them in a good place. They also want to get involved in the fuel production and have already bought into uranium mining in Southern Africa. Now, Westinghouse of the US have also increased their footprint and bought IST Nuclear Centurion near Pretoria. They infused another 118 people into that organisation and they are looking very closely as South Africa's pebble-bed modular-reaction technology and our first demonstration plant is due to be up in 2010/2011. They also want to bid for the conventional power station, which will be the second Koeberg. So, a lot of activity there with potential for more than one conventional and a lot of PBMR power stations on five coastal sites that Eskom has set-up. The expectation is that the investment programme will be completed by Eskom in March next year.

Maggs: From nuclear power to coal power. Eskom signing contracts for a new coal-fired power station.

Creamer: Two key contracts signed with regard to coal-fired power stations and the power station we are talking about here is Medupi and contracts we are talking about are those for the boilers and the turbines, the most important parts for any power station. The expenditure that they are looking at at Medupi is R78-billion and about 60% of that will go on these key items, which have now been awarded. They haven't told us who the winner is or the winners of the contracts are that will be done in the next few weeks. But, we know that they are attaching this to quite a local-content programme and also a fleet approach, so that the winners of the contract at this particular Medupi power station could also feature in Bravo and we are expecting some sort of announcement of the winners on the turbine and boiler contract for Bravo, which is another big coal-fired power station in the Mpumalanga area. So, Medupi in Limpopo, Bravo in Mpumalanga, both going ahead, both coal-fired and both in the region of R80-billion each.

Maggs: Given the current price of gold bullion, this is no surprise I guess - a South African gold-mining company investing R1,5-billion, you say, in a new gold mine in Ivory Coast.

Creamer: The South African-linked company is Randgold Resources. They have seen fit to invest in the region of R1,5-billion in a new gold mine in Ivory Coast. That is a thumbs up for the political situation in Ivory Coast, which has been embattled and troubled. But we see now that Randgold Resources is the biggest pure gold play on the London Stock Exchange. It was born out of our Rand Mines in South Africa and is headed by South African Dr Mark Bristow. Bristow is saying that it is time to go in to Ivory Coast and he is putting his money where his mouth is. That will be at Tongon in the north of the country where he has been exploring for sometime and his contention is that the soundness of the political recovery of the Ivory Coast is actually better than that of the Democratic Republic of Congo and he says all that remains really to sort out in the country are what he terms ‘administrative political issues' namely the reincorporation of the north rebel army into the national army. Then issues around citizenship in preparation for voting. He is already engaging the government heavily on infrastructure and looking to bring his operation into the national grid and put in other public infrastructure, which he says that the Ivory Coast government is very prepared to do, even to a greater extent than Mali where he has been active with Marula and Loulo and going underground with Loulo and talking about Loulo Three. So, also doing very well in Mali, but very happy with the situation in the Ivory Coast.

Maggs: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing editor of Engineering News and Mining Weekly, he'll be back with us at the same time next week.