South Africa Rejects Global Nuclear Plan

South Africa announced yesterday that it would not participate in a U.S.-led initiative to expand the global use of nuclear power, Reuters reported (see GSN, Sept. 17).

Top energy officials said they feared the 16-nation Global Nuclear Energy Partnership would interfere with South Africa’s freedom to export enriched uranium.  The nation has already demonstrated its enrichment capability when it produced material for six nuclear weapons that were later destroyed as the Apartheid-era government came to an end in 1994.

South Africa now envisions reviving its nuclear programs by building new reactors and enriching its own fuel from uranium mined domestically.

The United States has expressed hope that the multilateral partnership would provide a “viable alternative” to nations considering their own fuel production sites, which can also be used to produce nuclear weapon materials.

With such discouragement, South Africa felt it could not participate, said Minerals and Energy Minister Buyelwa Sonjica, who spoke to reporters at the International Atomic Energy’s Agency’s annual meeting in Vienna.

"We were concerned that some aspects of the GNEP declaration would conflict with our national policy,” she said.

“It is a sovereignty issue, to do with our own nuclear fuel reserves and fuel supply," added Tseliso Maqubela, the ministry’s nuclear program director (Mark Heinrich, Reuters, Sept. 18).

Ultimately, “we need to ensure that no unwarranted restrictions are imposed on the right of states to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” Sonjica said in her speech to delegates.

The GNEP partners signed a statement of principles Sunday that seeks to attract new partners by explicitly saying that no nation would be required to surrender any nuclear plans to participate in the partnership.

“States participating in this cooperation would not give up any rights, and voluntarily engage to share the effort and gain the benefits of economical, peaceful nuclear energy,” says the statement’s second paragraph.

Still, one U.S. official in Vienna yesterday acknowledged that “it wouldn’t make sense” for nations to participate in the partnership and build their own fuel production facilities because of the high cost of simultaneously developing indigenous technology while purchasing foreign equipment and materials.

“The enrichment business is a tough business,” said William Tobey, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration.  “There are huge economies of scale, so unless you’re producing [enriched uranium] at fairly large rates, it simply doesn’t make economic sense.”

The question of joining the partnership remains a dilemma for several other nuclear nations that were conspicuously absent from Sunday’s GNEP signing ceremony in Vienna.

Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom are among the nations that have opted to stay away from the partnership for now, potentially reducing the likelihood that they would join at a later time.  As outsiders, the holdouts would be unable to directly prevent the partnership from making policy decisions that could make membership less attractive (Greg Webb, Global Security Newswire, Sept. 19).

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