South Africa remains committed to developing nuclear power projects and plans to add new atomic energy capacity in coming years to meet rising domestic energy demand, despite a major accident at a Japanese nuclear reactor earlier this month, the country's public enterprises minister said Thursday. "We do plan to expand it (nuclear power). Because at the end of the day, there isn't one source of energy generation that we need to rely upon," Malusi Gigaba told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview in Dubai. Gigaba said South Africa was aiming to produce as much as 9,600 megawatts of electricity from nuclear power stations in the future, as part of a wider diversification of the country's energy portfolio that would also include a greater contribution from renewable energies. The comments come as the world's worst nuclear crisis since the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant in 1986 is unfolding in Japan, which has been battling for 13 days to control radiation leaks at its heavily-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that was struck by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11. South Africa's nuclear plans would be implemented "bearing in mind the situation that developed in Japan," Gigaba said. "Fortunately we're not moving into an unchartered terrain with nuclear. We already have the Koeberg power station in the south of the western cape and it's far safer than many of the nuclear plants, but obviously we're going to tread carefully in that regard," he added. "South Africa has quite strong nuclear capabilities...the skills are there." South Africa's state-owned power company, Eskom Holdings Ltd., produces about 1,800 MW of electricity, or 6% of the country's energy needs, from its Koeberg nuclear plant near Cape Town, which consists of two reactors. Eskom, whose shareholder is the government through the public enterprises ministry, generates and distributes almost 95% of the country's electricity, primarily from coal-fired power stations. Gigaba said that, in light of developments in Japan, an inter-ministerial committee on energy chaired by the deputy president may be asked to include in its mandate a monitoring of "the nuclear situation," and advise the government on "the best way to go." South Africa, the continent's biggest economy, is pouring billions of dollars into expanding power generation capacity to meet rising electricity demand that has not kept up with domestic requirements and led to frequent blackouts. The country is spending as much as 549 billion rand ($80 billion) as part of an expansion program that will be completed in five years, Gigaba said. "South Africa's economic demands are rising. At the same time the demands of our neighbors are such that we need to be able to provide them with some assistance of sorts," he said. -By Oliver Klaus and Angus McDowall, Dow Jones Newswires