U.S. delays shipment of uranium to S. Africa

Press, 4 August 1977, Page 8

U.S. delays shipment of uranium to S. Africa

NZPA Johannesburg An export licence for the shipment from America of 26kg of highly enriched uranium to South Africa is being held up by the American State Department, South African nuclear sources have said. South Africa needs the fuel for the country’s Safari 1 test reactor, but the uranium is being delayed because the United States wants South Africa to cooperate fully towards nonproliferation of nuclear arms, the sources say. The question of South Africa’s full participation with other uranium suppliers in non-proliferation agreements is being debated by the American State Department. In Tel Aviv, yesterday the Israeli Energy Minister (Mr Yitzhak Modai) said that if United States President (Mr Jimmy Carter) refused to supply a nuclear power station to Israel, the Government would shop elsewhere.. “There is no doubt that if we do not receive approval from the United States . . .

we will have to seek other sources for a nuclear power station,” Mr Modai told an interviewer on Radio Israel.

Israel and Egypt were both promised nuclear plants by President Richard Nixon during his Middle East visit in 1975. Mr Carter, however, has declared a new policy designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons. In Washington, an American Congressional committee has approved legislation that would automatically cut off United States nuclear exports to countries which detonate an atomic device or violate international nuclear safeguards. The bill, passed by the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, is in line with President Carter’s aim to try to stem nuclear proliferation around the world, but it is less stringent than a measure introduced in Congress last March.

A similar bill was approved earlier this week by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and sent to the Foreign Relations Committee for further action.

The measure sent to the full House requires that new nuclear agreements stipulate that United States nuclear exports would be cut off to any country exploding a nuclear device or violating International Atomic Energy authority safeguards on diversion of nuclear fuel. In addition, United States consent would be required for the transfer or reprocessing of nuclear materials. The United States also would have to approve all storage facilities. A further provision would ban reprocessing of nuclear material unless the United States is given warning well in advance of the time it would take to convert it into an explosive.

The bill also allows the President to over-ride the legislation if he feels it necessary in the national interest, but Congress still has the power to veto his decision.

The legislation would apply to all new agreements and require all previous undertakings to be renegotiated.

In exchange for the more

stringent regulations, the United States would offer nuclear fuel assurances and technological assistance to America’s nuclear partners as an incentive to co-oper-ation. Two new United States Government reports show there is no evidence any significant amount of uranium or plutonium has been stolen or diverted from the nation’s processing facilities, a spokesman has said. Uranium and plutonium are ingredients in atomic weapons.

The reports are expected to be issued jointly today by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration.

In San Francisco, the Governor of California (Mr Edmund Brown) said that the report would reveal that significant amounts of fissionable material are unaccounted for in the country. The spokesman disputed Mr Brown’s statement, but said he would not release the exact figures in the report until today.