PELINDABA: Secret, apartheid-era technology for highly enriched uranium dismantled (01 September 2011)

Pelindaba and its uranium- enrichment facility at Valindaba were kept secret during the apartheid era because they were enriching uranium for warheads under the guise of fuel supply

Published: 2011/09/01 07:02:28 AM

PELINDABA and its uranium- enrichment facility at Valindaba were kept secret during the apartheid era because they were enriching uranium for warheads under the guise of fuel supply.

SA is the only country in the world to have willingly halted its nuclear weapons programme, through the Treaty of Pelindaba of 1996. But the old infrastructure remains.

The US provided the Safari-1 reactor through its Atoms for Peace programme, and also supplied the facility with its highly enriched uranium (HEU).

But in the 1970s, when sanctions were placed on SA, the US stopped supplying this fuel.

"We had full enrichment plans in the 1960s-70s at Valindaba. It was used for warheads, but now that has been dismantled," South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa) spokesman Elliot Mulane says.

"We don’t want HEU any more, which is why we have closed Valindaba. We’re trying to remove all the technology associated with HEU."
However, Necsa will have to revisit its uranium-processing facilities — this time for low- enriched uranium (LEU) — to meet nuclear energy requirements as part of SA’s Second Integrated Resources Plan.

This plan will see 23% of SA’s power generated from nuclear facilities in the next 30 years, which equates to 9600MW. "This is about six reactors, like three Koeberg (nuclear power stations), because we build them in pairs," Mr Mulane says. "And we will need to enrich the LEU locally." Sarah Wild.