South Africa refuses to give up cache of weapon-grade uranium

Published 19 March 2015

 

In the 1980s, White minority-ruled South Africa built six nuclear bombs. In 1990s the F. W. de Klerk government began planning the transformation of the country into a democracy. As part of the transition, the country’s nuclear weapons, and nuclear weapons-making infrastructure, were dismantled under IAEA supervision. TheWhite-minority regime and, since 1994, the democratically elected South African government, have both held to, and refused to give up, the 485 pounds of weapon-grade nuclear fuel – some of it extracted from the dismantled weapons and some of it already produced but not yet put in warheads. Despite pressure by successive U.S. administrations, South Africa says it is determined to keep its weapon-grade nuclear fuel.

In 1990 the South African government extracted its inventory of highly enriched uranium from its nuclear weapons, then melted the fuel before storing it in a former silver vault at the Pelindaba nuclear research center just thirty minutes away from Pretoria, the country’s administrative capital. President F. W. de Klerk was already planning the transformation of South Africa from a White minority-controlled state to a democracy – this would occur in 1994 — and he believed that South Africa no longer needed the six nuclear bombs it had built in the 1980s. The bombs, and South Africa’s nuclear weapons-making infrastructure, were dismantled under IAEA monitoring.
The South African White-minority regime and, since 1994, the democratically elected South African government, have both held to, and refused to give up, the nuclear fuel.
Over the years, some of the nuclear fuel has been used to make medical isotopes, but roughly 485 pounds remain.
The United States has expressed concerns over the safety of South Africa’s nuclear cache. In November 2007, the research center’s security was breached when two teams of raiders entered the fenced perimeter. One group eventually broke into the center’s central alarm station. Thankfully, both teams were caught when a watch officer summoned other security personnel, but the episode has been a source of contention between leaders in South Africa and U.S. officials.
South African president Jacob Zuma has rejected incentives from the Obama administration to get rid of his country’s nuclear-weapons fuel. In an August 2011 letter, Obama warned Zuma that a terrorist nuclear attack would be a “global catastrophe,” and proposed that South Africa transform its nuclear explosives into benign reactor fuel, with U.S. support. If Zuma agreed, the White House would announce the deal at a 2012 summit on nuclear security in South Korea.
Zuma rejected the proposal, along with other proposals from the Obama administration regarding nuclear fuel.
TheWashington Post reports that the United States is partially responsible for South Africa’s nuclear cache. Between 1956 and 1965 it helped the country build its first nuclear reactor under the Atoms for Peaceprogram. The United States also trained scientists to run the South African reactor with U.S.-supplied weapons-grade uranium fuel.
In 1976, under the Ford administration, Washington cut off its fuel supply to South Africa after it concluded that the apartheid regime in South Africa had used nuclear research to create a clandestine bomb program.
On 22 September 1979, South Africa and Israel conducted a secret nuclear test near the Prince Edward Islands off Antarctica. The telling “double flash” of a nuclear explosion was captured by a U.S. Vela Hotel satellite. The test was never acknowledged by either South Africa or Israel, and most of the information the United States gathered on the event remains classified.
The Obama administration sees South Africa’s highly enriched uranium inventory as a target for terrorists and thieves. “The bottom line is that South Africa has a crime problem,” said arms control expert Jon Wolfsthal, a few months before he was tasked with leading the White House’s nonproliferation policy in 2014. “They have a facility that is holding onto material that they don’t need and a political chip on their shoulder about giving up that material. That has rightly concerned the United States, which is trying to get rid of any cache of HEU (highly enriched uranium) that is still out there.”
South African officials say America’s concern with nuclear terror is an excuse to restrict the spread of peaceful and profitable nuclear technology to the developing world, adding that its nuclear fuel inventory is secure. “We are aware that there has been a concerted campaign to undermine us by turning the reported burglary into a major risk,” said Clayson Monyela, spokesperson for the country’s foreign ministry, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation. Monyela noted that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had raised no concerns, and that “attempts by anyone to manufacture rumors and conspiracy theories laced with innuendo are rejected with the contempt they deserve.”
South Africa has used some of its nuclear fuel to build medical and industrial isotopes which generates roughly $85 million in income per year. In addition to the commercial benefit of keeping its cache of highly enriched uranium, South Africa sees its inventory as a source of pride, putting it on equal footing with other non-nuclear-weapons states which still have enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon: Germany, Japan, Canada, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Poland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belarus.
Abdul Samad Minty, who served for years as South Africa’s top nuclear policy maker and now as the country’s ambassador to United Nations agencies headquartered in Geneva, has dismissed the U.S. push to remove South Africa’s nuclear fuel and curtail the nuclear ambitions of other developing countries. “The problem is you can’t have nuclear-weapons states who feel they can have nuclear weapons and have as many as they want,” he said. On efforts by the United States to reduce global nuclear arsenals: “Yes they are reducing, not disarming,” Minty said.
In response, Gary Samore, the White House coordinator on weapons of mass destruction from 2009 to 2013, told Minty, “Nuclear disarmament is not going to happen,” adding: “It’s a fantasy. We need our weapons for our safety, and we’re not going to give them up.”
For Minty, that reasoning is unacceptable. “Now if you say you need nuclear weapons for your security, what stops another country from saying at another time, in another situation, I also need nuclear weapons for my security?” “People who smoke can’t tell someone else not to smoke,” Minty said.
Waldo Stumpf, an atomic energy official in South Africa who presided over the dismantlement of the apartheid-era bomb program, affirmed that removing of diluting the country’s highly enriched uranium “was never part of the thinking here. Not within Mr. (Frederik W.) de Klerk’s government. Not afterwards, when the ANC took over. Why would we give away a commercially valuable material that has earned a lot of foreign exchange? Why would we do that?”
South Africa intends not only to keep its current enriched uranium cache, but officials keep open the possibility of making or acquiring more. “Our international legally binding obligations . . . allow for the enrichment of uranium for peaceful purposes only, irrespective of the enrichment level,” Zuma said at the 2012 nuclear security summit in Seoul.