Uranium enrichment: S. Africa’s secret

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33815, 11 April 1975, Page 9

Uranium enrichment: S. Africa’s secret

(N.Z. Press x4ss7i— Copyright) JOHANNESBURG, April 10.

South Africa’s planned processing plant for enriching uranium on a commercial scale, announced by the Prime Minister (Mr Vorster) in Parliament on Monday, is expected to cost the equivalent of SNZBBSm, and to be in production by 1980. The plant will use a new process developed and tested by South African scientists. It will produce vital nuclear fuel for industrial and commercial purposes on a massive scale. Experts consider that in five years the new plant will have an annual production of enriched uranium of

about 2400 tons. Used as fuel for powering reactors to produce nuclear energy, this could have a monetary value to the country of about SNZIBSm.

Although the working processes of the South African development are still a closely-guarded secret, the system has been described as much cheaper and simpler than the gaseous diffusion formula now used by' the United States. The process has been developed secretly behind the grey-brown walls of the Pelindaba, Pretoria, experimental research station for the last 12 to 25 years. The fact that the revolutionary process meant that South Africa could make use of her uranium reserves, estimated at about 300,000 tons, so much more cheaply than any rival country, prompted the strict security. About half the expense of using the American process is the huge cost of installing the system, estimated by experts at about SNZBBBm. What few details of the South African system are known include the fact that it uses far less stages for its enrichment process than its American equivalent. The levels of enrichment reached at each stage of the South African process are significantly higher.