South Africa's state-owned power utility Eskom is in exploratory talks with the World Bank to help fund a new multi-billion-dollar nuclear build programme that could be launched within 12 months, a senior Eskom official said on Wednesday.

Eskom, which operates Africa's only operational nuclear power station close to Cape Town, is in the process of preparing a request for information for up to 5,200 megawatts of new nuclear generation capacity.

South Africa wants baseload generation capacity as the country diversifies its energy mix away from coal-fired plants that supply most of the electricity.