"We will commence with the actual nuclear procurement process in the second quarter of this financial year," she told lawmakers in Cape Town Tuesday. The Cabinet will discuss and endorse completed intergovernmental agreements and they will then go to Parliament for approval, she said.

The electricity master plan, drawn up in 2010 for the continent’s most-industrialized economy, provides for the purchase of 9,600 megawatts of nuclear energy. South Africans are dealing with regular rolling blackouts as aging plants break down following insufficient maintenance.

The country has held nuclear workshops with Russia, China, the U.S., France, South Korea, Japan and Canada and may spend as much as 1 trillion rand ($84.4 billion) on new facilities, ignoring objections from environmental activists, opposition parties, unions and even its own advisers.

Regular scheduled power cuts, known locally as load-shedding, have "accelerated the finalization" of the country’s Integrated Energy Plan, which will be published as a policy document once it’s approved by the Cabinet, Joemat-Pettersson said.

The paper will prioritize policy interventions for future energy-sector programs, she said.