The Secret Nuclear Program

South Africa’s Nuclear Program, a Case Study for Dealing with Iran

May 20th, 2007
By:
R. Colon
PO Box 29754
Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico 00929

For over fifty years, South Africa was the single most powerful nation in Africa. South Africa weapons’ industries produced (and continue to produce today) the most sophisticated weapons system platforms in the African Continent. Their Army and Air Force proved equally adaptable at either fighting guerrilla warfare in their own soil or taking up the Soviet and Cuban backed Angola army armed with the latest Soviet armor vehicles. South Africa’s military record was impressive. The South African Defense Force (SADF) achieved major victories from the early 1960s onward involving low-intensity conflicts in the sub-continent. All of these military expeditions ended in the early 1990s with the handing over the government to the black majority. Also, major budget cuts had reduced, not only the structural size of the SADF but also it’s fighting capability. Today, experts expect that if South Africa was to be invaded by another small South Africa country, the SADF would be hard pressed to hold them, let alone to launch a counteroffensive campaign. In late 1980s the white Apartheid government of South Africa began to make small gestures of reconciliation with the black majority. Restrictions were lifted, travel bans were abandoned and in a moment parallel to the fall of the Berlin Wall, longtime South African activist Nelson Mandela was free from twenty-seven years of captivity. These events eventually lead Mandela and his movement, the African national Congress (ANC), to assume power in Pretoria. Thus, South Africa is regarded as the first modern state where the ruling elite gave up complete political and military power to the opposition without firing a shot. Shortly after the ANC moved into Pretoria’s government institutions, reports began to surface regarding South Africa’s scuttle of its own nuclear weapon program as well as its ballistic missile systems. The latter due in part by the imposition of massive United Nation’s financial sanctions on Pretoria. Details regarding South Africa’s nuclear program were sketchiest at first. Gradually, as more information came to light, a clearer picture of the events surrounding their nuclear weapons program was known. In all, South Africa built six nuclear devices, all in the twenty kiloton range. It was also determined that at the time, South Africa possessed enough enriched uranium for another bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency, with major assistance from the United States, helped Pretoria’s government to dismantle its nuclear devices. The weapons’ nuclear components were melted down and the casings were physically destroyed. All material related to the programs was either completely destroyed or re-built to use in other fields. Today, South Africa is the only country in the world to voluntarily abandon a successful ongoing nuclear weapons program.

In the past decades there had been a number of countries that had started a nuclear weapon program only to abandon it when the horrified reality of the massive financial and logistic commitment set-in. Among these examples were: Taiwan, Sweden, Libya, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Algeria, Spain, Egypt and South Korea. The first question we should be asking ourselves is why these countries found necessary to invest resources that some of them did not posses in order to develop a nuclear weapon. The answer is survival. By the time President F.W. de Klerk and his National Party left the government, South Africa had been involved in two decades of military conflicts. Their main antagonist was Angola. This African nation possessed a well-trained and Soviet equipped army. It had in its regular ranks advisors from North Korea, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but more importantly, it had two full Cuban divisions. That is fifty thousand men with the latest Soviet-supplied equipment. At this time, Pretoria, because of its Apartheid regime, was isolated from the world weapons market. It could not legally purchase advanced weapon systems in the world’s market because of U.N. sanctions. This situation forced South Africa to invest vast amounts of money in the development of an indigenous weapon industry. The industrial base of South Africa was forced by the government to divert resources from other industries to weapons design and development. What they were able to produce was nothing short of amazing. Some of the weapons platform that Pretoria was able to develop and field was amongst the most advanced system deployed in Africa. The 155mm G-5 howitzer was one example of it. The G-5 was so effective, that it became a best seller in the black market. Also developed by South Africa was the Buffel troop transport, a top tire troop carrier that would go on to see extensive action against the Angolans. Added to the mortar, rifles and rocket systems, the SADF had enough firepower to deal with its enemies on the ground, the problem for Pretoria was in the air. Unable to produce an indigenous fighter-bomber, the SADF Air Force could not stop the squadrons of Mig-29 and Sukhoi fighter-bombers flying from Angola. Pretoria needed an answer to stop the bombing of its ground forces or the country could be overrun by the enemy quickly. Here’s the genesis of South Africa’s nuclear weapons program. In 1976, South Africa’s only active nuclear research reactor, Safari which was commissioned in 1965, had produced enough enriched uranium to produce one crude nuclear device. South Africa pressed ahead in the early 1980s and eventually managed to produce six clumsy and bulky World War II gun-type nuclear bombs, but more importantly for Pretoria, it had acquired a deterrence weapon. It is important to state that had South African scientific community be given more time, they probable would have been able to reduce the size of the devices which would allow the bombs to be placed on a missile warhead.

At this time another player came in the picture. Israel had just fielded its first indigenous offensive missile system, the Jericho-1, and was in the process of developing the longer range Jericho2 which was designed to carry a one ton payload to a distance of a thousand miles. Some of the early testing of the Jericho-2 was performed on the Overberg Test Range near Arniston, South Cape. Israel utilized the Overberg Test Range facility because it did not possess an eastward facing test range of it’s own. At this time, Pretoria nuclear devices were large enough that if the needs ever arose, only obsolete British-built Buccaneer fighter-bombers could have been employed to deliver them. Israel and South Africa had many common issues that tied them up together. One of them was their collective and deliberate “uncertainty” about their nuclear weapon program. They did not boast about the fact that each had develop a comprehensive nuclear weapon program, which in political terms is often more delivered in achieving political goals than a full disclosure of their activities. The ongoing situation in South Africa was making Washington nervous. Leaders in the United States were coming to realize that in a short period, Pretoria would have the ability to re-shape politically and military the situation on the African Continent. It was Pretoria’s development of a nuclear device, and more importantly, that their leaders were not boasting their existence, that lead the United States, the Soviet Union and Europe to make an all-out effort to try convince South Africa to relinquish its nuclear arsenal, now, in the mid 1980s, estimated at six devices. In August of 1977, South African President De Klerk delineated their country’s defense deterrent strategy. The first phase of Pretoria’s defense stand was to be strategic uncertainty to be issue in case of impending national emergency. The South African government would not display any inclination on either side of the nuclear issue. Phase two was, if their territory integrity were about to be compromised, then Pretoria would admit possessing nuclear weapons. If this action failed to impress the attacking party, Pretoria would switch to phase three, an underground nuclear test demonstration. This strategic plan was aimed mostly at Western capitals, more importantly, Washington; in order to obtain their political and military support in case South Africa’s military were to be overrun by an invading force. So here laid one of Pretoria’s main reasons for acquiring nuclear weapons, the black mail of the West should South Africa were on the verge of collapse.

The main South African’s nuclear program efforts began in 1977 with the construction of the Vastrap nuclear testing site in the Kalahari Desert, a place Pretoria hoped to use in the testing of their nuclear devices. Preparations were made to use Vastrap for dummy testing, an instrumented tests without the actual nuclear core. Soviet surveillance satellite detected preparations for the test in early July 1977. Though the test never happened, it proved to Western Powers that Pretoria was seriously preparing a nuclear test in the near future. This same exercise happened again in the mid 1980s when Pretoria’s quest for a nuclear deterrence officially began. South Africa initially intended to build a nuclear device for research and development purposes and as is, their initial nuclear program was given to the Minister of Mining instead of the Ministry of Defense. Over time, both agencies would share duties in building-up South Africa’s still infant nuclear program. The task of building a nuclear device by a third world economy country is of mammoth undertaking. One which needed to consolidate the prowess of the private sector with all the resources the state could supply to the project. Full scientific mobilization was organized and non-essential resources were diverted, almost in full, to the program. Seven years after the decision was made to proceed with the nuclear program, South Africa was able to produce one crude nuclear device. A weapon similar to the one the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It was obvious that South Africa imported nuclear materials and expertise from abroad, but what is not completely known is from where. What is certain is that Israel was South Africa’s most important weapon platform supplier. Advanced weapons systems found their way to Pretoria, especially Israeli long range missile technology. The cooperation between Pretoria and Tel Aviv was a two-lane street. South Africa is believed to have shipped to Israel over fifty tons of concentrated uranium ore or yellowcake in exchange for thirty grams of tritium, a heavy hydrogen isotope usually used to boost the explosive power of a nuclear device. Tritium can substantially raise the yield of a nuclear bomb. The Israeli tritium shipped to Pretoria never found its way to a nuclear weapon core. With a useful lifespan of twelve years, much of Pretoria’s tritium was beyond service use at the time South Africa decided to closedown its nuclear program. The strict secrecy of which Pretoria’s nuclear program was perused often forced them to make do with in-house technologies. Between late 1978 to the early 1990s, South Africa produced high enriched Uranium at its main producing facility in Pelindaba. One item that surprised United Nations Inspectors when Pretoria opened its program was the amount of low-tech equipment it used to produce the nuclear devices. Between 1977 and 1989, Pretoria developed six nuclear devices without ever accepting of conducting a test. In September 1979, a United State’s Vela Satellite detected a double flash off the southern coast of Africa. This strongly suggested that a low-yield nuclear device was test exploded. As we now know, South Africa had only enough HUE for just one nuclear device in 1979. This data was later confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog group, in their forensic analysis of HUE production. South Africa built its first three devices in a heavy and bulky configuration, exceeding one ton, mainly to be used as an underground demonstration device. At the time, Pretoria did not posses the ability to perform an atmospheric detonation. Pretoria finally relinquished its nuclear weapons program along with its six known devices in early 1991. IAEA inspectors were allowed to travel the country in search of its nuclear processing sites. They encountered a high level of cooperation with South Africa’s scientists and related personnel. Disclosure of technical data was unprecedented in the years of IAEA monitoring activities around the world. There’s one area in which South Africa was reluctant to submit information: the source of the raw nuclear-related materials used during the life of Pretoria’s nuclear weapon program.

What is worrisome about South Africa’s nuclear program is that the Western Powers learned from it after it had been successful in constructing a crude nuclear device.@