4. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - Faculties submissions

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    Managing health and safety in South Africa’s renewable energy power plants
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Sloan, Mark James
    The study explores the suitability of the South African Occupational Health and Safety Act Number 85 of 1993 (OHS Act) and its Regulations in their ability to appropriately support the management of people from hazards to health and safety within utility-scale renewable energy (RE) power plants in South Africa. The study includes the country’s three leading RE technologies that are in-service and connected to the national electrification grid, covering solar photovoltaic (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP) and wind power plants. Semi-structured interviews are used to collect the opinions and experiences of respondents. Each power plant’s operations are assessed from a health and safety hazard management perspective. This is followed by an evaluation of the OHS Act and its Regulations to determine their suitability in appropriately supporting the management of their fundamental intention of ensuring health and safety within solar PV, CSP and wind power plants. The study shows that these RE power plants do not present any health and safety hazards unique to these sectors under normal operating conditions. However, it does highlight several areas where the OHS Act and its Regulations are not entirely appropriate in managing people from hazards to health and safety within these RE power plants. The study identifies the importance of continually maintaining the OHS Act and its Regulations in line with technological advancements.
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    The Application of Robotics in Deep Level Mining in South Africa and its Influence on Health and Safety
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Gaokgorwe, Tebogo; Gobind, Jenika
    Application of robotics in mining operations particularly in deep mining is considered to be challenging when factoring the impact of health and safety in day to day operations. Majority of the employees in South Africa’s mining industry have low training levels, unskilled work content as well as large figures of underground employees labouring for survival at lower-end cost curves and excessive exposure to deprived underground conditions. The rising demand for mineral products is compelling mining companies to go deeper in mines even where such increase in the depth results in higher costs, risks, and a further decline in the conditions of working. This paper examines the current application of robotics in deep level mining, discusses the challenges in robotics adoption and their influence in health and safety. Trusting on the qualitative content analysis methodology the study adopted to interview participants and collect data from the mining journals for sampling and data collection. The findings suggest that although deep-level mines have embraced an increase in robotics and extensive methods due to global competition and the need for better access to mineral reserves trends in productivity in the gold mining industry remains unchanged for a long period and mining labour remains impacted by slow technological advancement. Inadequate application of robotics and developed control policies and measures for dealing with occurring mining disasters are some of the key challenges with the robotics adoption. The application of robotics will allow all safety experts to plan for exploration, extraction, optimisation of operations and worker monitoring as well as protection. The limitations of the study is that there are few current publications peer reviewed articles and the prevailing literature is old for the current research. The study concludes that there is a gradual advancement of technical capacities in deep-level mining. The main technical challenges to the application of robotics is the availability, reliability as well as fail-safe operations of robotics. Lastly robotics will improve exploration, mapping of mining operations as well as worker equipment. The study recommends future studies on comprehensive approaches to the socio-economic effect of robotics mechanisation and application in deep-level mining