## 7 Results and Discussion
### Quantitative Analysis
Nuclear energy is seen globally as one of the options for energy generation that could help cut down the levels of GHG emissions. To that effect, it was ranked as the second-highest opportunity for the sector; it recorded a weight of 25.89%. **Foreign investor's partnership (O3)**. Some 30 countries have been identified as emerging markets for nuclear energy technologies by the World Nuclear Association. These regions include the Middle East; Eastern Europe; central, western, northern, and southern Africa; Central and South America; and Southeast and East Asia. These markets have been identified by China and Russia as opportunities to enlarge their territories of influence through economic and diplomatic relationships [77]. This presents an opportunity to South Africa in terms of collaboration to help finance its nuclear power expansion drive. Other countries such as the USA and South Korea could also have an interest in South Africa's nuclear energy and could invest in the sector. Especially, considering that the South African government wants to add a total of 2.5 GW of nuclear power to its generation mix, it is safe to say that small modular reactors (SMRs) may be the best choice in that regard. South Korea and the USA may have an ace in the hole for the development of SMRs, since the South African energy minister stated that the country was considering the development of modular stations [78]. Russia's ability to provide funding for new NPP projects through the country's state-owned enterprises enables it to provide attractive financial terms to newcomer countries in the nuclear energy sector [77]. The consulted specialists assigned a weight of 12.08% to this factor, meaning this factor ranks third in terms of opportunities in the sector. **Job creation potentials (O4)**. As presented supra, the development of nuclear energy comes with several job opportunities and, considering the high unemployment rate among the youths in the country, an expansion in nuclear energy would provide jobs for some people. Experts, therefore, apportioned a 9.94% weightage to this factor. A GCI and CR of 0.29 and 8.2%, respectively, were obtained from the computations. The weights and consolidated matrix are indicated in Figure 4 and Table 7, respectively. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Criteria** & **W1** & **W2** & **W3** & **W4** \\ \hline W1 & 1 & 3 & 5 & 3 \\ \hline W2 & 1/3 & 1 & 3 & 3 \\ \hline W3 & 1/5 & 1/3 & 1 & 2 \\ \hline W4 & 1/3 & 1/3 & 1/2 & 1 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 7: Pairwise comparison matrix for opportunities. **Seismic events (T1)**. The importance of a nuclear facility to withstand earthquakes has proven to be very key for its safety. An NPP must be designed using the 'defense-in-depth' principle, which involves a systematic application of consecutive and independent levels of protection through the combination of box-in-box physical barriers and redundant as well as a different protection functions with accident management procedures. In this case, one protection layer comes into play when the other fails [79]. These are all measures that are currently employed to minimize the effect of nuclear accidents that may be caused by seismic events. However, despite all these measures that are put in place to enhance the safety of NPPs, the experts still assigned the highest weight, of 42.5%, to it. It is still seen as a major threat to the development of NPPs. **Water availability (T2)**. The installation of new NPPs normally comes with extra water demands for cooling purposes, mostly freshwater. Research has shown that NPPs' water consumption is highest in terms of per MWh among the thermoelectric technologies [80]. Considering the water challenges in the country, as presented in earlier discussions, the experts assigned a weight of 14% to this factor, which is indicative of the very important role the availability of water at a locality has on site-selection decisions for NPP installations. **Domination of fossil fuel (T3)**.