Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
Analysis and Action on Policies Impacting Africa

The nuclear chain of command: South Africa and the Bomb

In his essay, ‘You and the Atom Bomb’, a direct reference to the nuclear arms of the ‘Cold War’ – the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western powers, George Orwell writes,’ Unable to conquer one another, they are likely to continue ruling the world between them.’

What role did apartheid South Africa play in this ideological end-game?

South Africa’s uranium deposits, described in a report authored by geologist RA Cooper in 1923, and later researchers employed by the US’s Manhattan Project, revealed that the Witwatersrand gold mines possessed, at that time, possibly the largest low grade deposits in the world. Uranium was mined by SA for the US and UK, raking in a revenue of R1 billion from 1952-1960, at least one component underpinning the support of the US in the context of the Cold War.

Uranium - a highly strategic resource, effectively prevented three-fifths of the Security Council (France, US and UK) from instituting a mandatory oil embargo on the apartheid regime, a move that would have crushed the energy and oil-starved government. Though it was claimed that enrichment was for energy purposes only, by 1989, there were six weapons of mass destruction, containing 55 kgs of 90% enriched uranium - weapon’s grade, with a seventh on the way. The apartheid regime’s nuclear programme, designed to blow enemies - including the recently emancipated, ‘unfriendly’ regimes of Angola and Mozambique, off the face of the earth.

The crash of the Berlin Wall - stripping the apartheid government of the primary pretext sustaining apartheid - and implicit US support, would see Prime Minister de Klerk dismantling the regime’s nuclear programme, employing Dr Wynand Mouton, then-rector of the University of the Free State and retired nuclear physicist, to destroy the body of evidence related to the nuclear programme.

No amnesty was required for the estimated 1000 specialists involved in the industry.

The Nuclear 1000

Come freedom in 1994, Trevor Manuel, head of the ANC’s Economic Department would vow never again to ‘issues as critical as the nuclear programme…confined to experts in dark, smoke filled rooms.’ Never again, he promised, would the militarised culture of secrecy informing both the apartheid regime and the global nuclear industry be subject to closed door negotiations. Yet the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee never included the ‘nuclear 1000’, nor were they asked to seek amnesty.

According to Dr David Fig, author of Uranium Road, just a few months shy of Manuel’s never again statement, a group composed of the apartheid-era’s nuclear scientists, formed a company called IST, proposing a design now known as the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), capable of generating 165 MW per unit. Though pebble bed technology has already failed in Germany (the patent holders), and is not on the agenda of ‘developed’ countries, the South African government has heavily invested public funds. The technology was aggressively backed by high level persons such as former Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin.

The initial budget estimated at R365 million, has now increased to an incredible R20 billion allocated to the project. ‘This cost is only for erecting the pilot (demonstration) plant and does include operating, commercialising or decommissioning it. Cost overruns are normal for the nuclear industry; the true cost is often the multiple value of the original,’ said Fig.

Already, R2 billion has been spent on research and development with no transparent accounting of how public money was spent, nor any set date for the completion of the pilot plant, though experts have put a date ranging from 2011 - 2016. National energy provider Eskom has signed a letter of intent agreeing to purchase 24 units, therefore making production viable.

Energy too cheap to meter?

Jaco Kriek, CEO of the PBMR Company, when asked by Carte Blanche as to whether purchasers had signed the dotted line, he responded, ‘No, we haven’t signed, purely because we cannot actually get into discussions with too many customers. So the two customers we are looking at the moment are Eskom and the US department of energy.’

However, Eskom’s various preconditions render such a possibility as unlikely.

‘If Eskom’s wants to wriggle out of it, they can. The letter of understanding is not binding, but is instead hedged by many preconditions including one which states that the reactors must be the cheapest technology at the time. The nuclear industry will not be supplying much energy - maybe 5% or double that, and it seems that pebble beds have been downgraded as they are running into credit problems, amongst others,’ said Fig.

Presently, two nuclear reactors at Koeberg (Dutch for ‘Cow Mountain’) opened for business in 1984-1985 provides some 38% of energy in the Western Cape and 5% of national energy; each unit produces 900 MW (1MW is 1 million kilowatts kW). Both reactors are midlife and will have to be decommissioned within the next two decades. The PBMR Company lists Westinghouse, a US nuclear energy corporation (and an Obama backer – coinciding with Obama’s recent push toward nuclear), the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC), Eskom and the SA government as backer and shareholders. Westinghouse holds 15% of the shares only.

A spokesperson for the PBMR Company stated to The Times, ‘(It) gives us the capacity to go from a Third World to First World country, in that we are leading the way in nuclear technology.’

Since Chernobyl, developed countries in such as Germany and the Netherlands have scrapped nuclear reactor development; no developed country entertains the pebble bed model.

Koeberg’s reactors – relying on highly specialised personnel, has experienced several ‘accidents’ including misplaced bolts that had to be purchased from France with a lull of several months while the businesses, households and industry in the Western Cape experienced prolonged blackouts.

‘Aside from the fact that no solution has been found concerning radioactive waste which lasts for hundreds of thousands of years, in South Africa, we simply lack the skill to maintain the technology, let alone handle the situation if anything goes wrong.’

The technology renders us dependent on foreign corporations and skills, with mass pollution and little in the way of ‘cheap’ energy, job creation, and decentralization. In 2007, the Department of Minerals and Energy’s nuclear policy document advocated the creation of a specialised nuclear police force, similar to that of the apartheid-era’s culture of secrecy.

The DME has largely marginalised stakeholder participation and the concerns of civil society, workers and communities, regarding radioactivity, cost, potential risks and the closed door negotiations taking place at cabinet level only. Cumulatively, there 53 highly contaminated radioactive sites in SA.

The push toward nuclear energy has been rationalized by alleged lack of carbon emissions, - South Africa maintains a higher per capita emissions rate than the US, and recent energy shortages causing rolling blackouts nation-wide, at a time when SA continued selling energy to foreign corporations.

But though nuclear power stations do not emit carbon, the carbon intensive process including milling, mining, reprocessing, construction, and disposal of lethal carcinogenic radioactive waste generated from the core of the reactor including plutonium, with extensive half-lives, many of them over 100 000 years.

According to environmental consultant Muna Lakhani, ‘For the externalities relating to the PBMR, one must add fuel enrichment (an energy-intensive process), emissions-not only daily nuclear radiation, but also daily emissions such as strontium and cesium.

‘Decommissioning must also be accounted for (often more than the original cost-the UK decommissioning bill has rocketed to $116bn) and the very real problem of how to contain radiation for hundreds of thousands of years-no safe solution has been found.’

In 2004, British nuclear expert Professor Steve Thomas, one of 15 nuclear specialists retained by the government to author a 2002 report on the feasibility of PBMR’s stated that the government should immediately pull out as the design had never been built successfully, is ten times the original, ten years behind schedule, with little in the way of electrification.

Dark, smoke filled rooms

According to Fig, ‘The head of the National Nuclear Regulator is a revolving door guy – he previously worked for the PBMR Company; he has yet to come out with a strong public statement about the incident. The NNR is terribly weak and under budgeted.’

In light of this, is nuclear energy democratic, subject to public influence or confined to the dark rooms Manuel spoke of?

‘The drafting of both the Nuclear Energy Act and National Nuclear Regulation Act was formulated by officials in the DME, who primarily consulted only cabinet and the Chamber of Mines.

Has the government endorsed the inherited nuclear legacy?

‘Globally, the industry operates in a culture of secrecy. The PBMR’s will use 10% or less enriched uranium, not weapons-grade. But we are now moving back to the way in which issues like nuclear were handled in the apartheid. It is anti-democratic.

”Were (the atomic bomb) cheap to manufacture…like a bicycle, it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state,’ said Orwell.’

The Party Line

Where do various parties stand on PBMR technology?

Democratic Alliance: The DA would not disqualify any energy generating source from long-term integrated energy planning. Having said that we have grown increasingly sceptical of a new nuclear build in South Africa and do not believe it is desirable for the foreseeable future. Our primary focus is on improving energy efficiency and promoting a massive uptake of renewable energy.The DA does not support further state support for the PBMR – PBMR Pty Ltd must find private investors to cover any further investment.

Independent Democrats: The ID is opposed to Eskom’s current proposal to expand the use of nuclear energy in South Africa. We believe that nuclear energy is not an appropriate choice for South Africa for a number of reasons. Firstly it is too expensive and will end up increasing South Africa’s foreign debt and its balance of payments deficit.

The major beneficiaries will be foreign companies like Areva or Westinghouse and very few local jobs will be created as a result. In terms of the PBMR, the ID has been the only party that has consistently been objecting to the billions of rands that have continued to pour into this highly suspect project.

The ID firmly believes that this money could have been more effectively utilized in building a Concentrated Solar Power plant which would have already been up and running now as opposed to the PBMR which is constantly being delayed and subjected to redesigns.

Inkatha Freedom Party: The development of the PBMR has lacked transparency, been handled with incompetence and huge waste of money way beyond expected or budgeted costs. While the IFP has accepted the possibility of nuclear energy as an alternative to polluting coal fired power, we are concerned at the absence of safe methods for disposing of nuclear waste from the PBMR.

Prognostic costing has revealed that the cost of developing nuclear power coal power and concentrate solar thermal power stations, on megawatt parity, will be much the same by the year 2015. Therefore the IFP strongly supports investment in CSTP since our county has one of the ideal climates for such technology and with a reasonable REFIT (renewable energy feed in tariff) could be one of the foremost developers of the technology in the future.

A version of this article appeared in Muslim Views (April).