₦airaland Forum

DieVluit:
Why SA’s nuclear stash worries US

March 17 2015 at 10:32am
By Douglas Birch and R Jeffrey Smith
The US is concerned about the security of a quarter-ton of uranium stored near Pretoria, which it fears could fall into the wrong hands, write Douglas Birch and R Jeffrey Smith.

Washington - Enough nuclear explosive to fuel half a dozen bombs, each powerful enough to obliterate central Washington or most of Lower Manhattan, is locked in a former silver vault at Pelindaba, the nuclear research centre near Pretoria.

Technicians extracted the highly enriched uranium from the apartheid regime’s nuclear weapons in 1990, then melted the fuel down and cast it into ingots.

Over the years, some of the cache has been used to make medical isotopes, but roughly 220kg remains, and South Africa is keeping a tight grip on it.

That gives this country – which has insisted that the US and other world powers destroy their nuclear arsenals – a theoretical ability to regain its former status as a nuclear-weapons state.

But what really worries the US is that the nuclear explosives could be stolen and used by militants to commit a catastrophic terrorist attack.

Senior current and former US officials say they have reason to be concerned.

On a cold night in November 2007, two teams of raiders breached the fences at Pelindaba, which is set in the rolling scrubland half an hour’s drive west of Pretoria.

One group penetrated deep into the site unchallenged and broke into the site’s central alarm station. They were stopped only when a substitute watch officer summoned help.

The episode remains a source of contention between Pretoria and Washington because no suspects were ever charged with the raid, and South African officials dismissed it as a minor, bungled burglary. US officials and experts – backed up by a confidential South African security report – say to the contrary that the assailants appeared to know what they were doing and what they wanted: the bomb-grade uranium. They also say the raid came perilously close to succeeding.

The episode still spooks Washington, which as a result has waged a discreet diplomatic campaign to persuade South Africa to get rid of its large and, by US reckoning, highly vulnerable stock of nuclear-weapons fuel.

But President Jacob Zuma, like his predecessors, has resisted the White House’s persistent entreaties and generous incentives to do so, for reasons that have baffled and enormously frustrated the Americans.

President Barack Obama, in a previously undisclosed private letter sent to Zuma in August 2011, went so far as to propose that South Africa transform its nuclear explosives into benign reactor fuel, with US help.

Zuma was allegedly unmoved, however, and in a letter of his own, is said to have insisted that South Africa needed its nuclear materials and was capable of keeping them secure.

He did not accept a related appeal from Obama two years later, current and former senior US officials said.

Over nine years ending in 1965, Washington helped South Africa build its first nuclear reactor under the Atoms for Peace programme and then trained scientists to run it with US-supplied, weapons-grade uranium fuel. Washington finally cut off the fuel supply in 1976, after becoming convinced the apartheid regime had used nuclear research to create a clandestine bomb programme, fuelled by its own highly enriched uranium.

By the end of the Cold War, apartheid leaders ordered the weapons destroyed and the production facilities dismantled, while holding on to the explosive fuel.

Raising the threat of nuclear terror, South African officials say, is an excuse to restrict the spread of peaceful and profitable nuclear technology to the developing world, and to South Africa in particular. But this demand for enrichment rights – which Tehran, too, wants enshrined in an agreement with six great powers – is hardly South Africa’s alone. Although the Obama administration has tried to discourage uranium enrichment everywhere, leaders in Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Jordan and South Korea say they see nuclear power, along with the ability to enrich uranium, as their right.

Unlike Iran, however, South Africa already possesses highly enriched uranium – nearly a quarter-ton of it. That’s why current and former US officials say South Africa is now the world’s largest unco-operative holder of nuclear explosives, outside the nine existing nuclear powers.

Few outside the weapons states possess such a large stockpile of prime weapons material, and none has been as defiant of US pressure to give it up.

In response last week, the South African government reaffirmed its view that the November 2007 break-in was a run-of-the-mill burglary and asserted that the weapons uranium was safe.

“We are aware that there has been a concerted campaign to undermine us by turning the reported burglary into a major risk,” said Clayson Monyela, spokesman for the Department of International Relations and Co-operation.

He said the International Atomic Energy Agency had raised no concerns, and that “attempts by anyone to manufacture rumours … are rejected with the contempt they deserve”.

Highly enriched uranium is the terrorists’ nuclear explosive of choice. A bomb’s worth could fit in a five-pound sack and emit so little radiation that it could be carried around in a backpack with little hazard to the wearer.

Physicists say a sizeable nuclear blast could be readily achieved by slamming two shaped chunks of it together at high speed.

Just nine non-nuclear weapon states besides South Africa still have enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon, although mostly not in a readily usable form.

For South Africa, though, maintaining a grip on its bomb fuel is tangled up with national pride, its suspicion of big power motivations and its anger over Washington’s past half-measures in opposing apartheid.

“It’s a technical issue with an emotional overhang,” said Donald Gips, the US ambassador to South Africa from 2009 to 2013.

Other South Africans have said that by refusing to let go of its uranium, the country retains the higher political and scientific stature of a country such as Japan, which is considered “nuclear weapons-capable” while possessing none.

Obama raised the nuclear issue again during a trip to Pretoria in June 2013. This time, he privately asked Zuma to relinquish the uranium trove in exchange for a free shipment of 350kg of fresh, non-weapons-usable reactor fuel, valued at $5 million (R60m).

Obama followed up with a three-page letter in December 2013, two days after he spoke to Zuma at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in Soweto. According to a copy of the letter, he urged Zuma to seal this new deal at a March 2014 nuclear summit in the Netherlands. Although technical experts held preliminary talks, Zuma never accepted the swop.

South Africa has used some of the former bomb fuel to make medical and industrial isotopes – generating more than R1 billion in income a year. But about six years ago, it started making the isotopes with low-enriched uranium that poses little proliferation risk – a development that removed its long-standing rationale for keeping the materials.

South Africa says it is retaining the weapons uranium partly because some day someone may find a new, as-yet-undiscovered, commercial application. If and when one was found, a senior South African diplomat said in an interview, “it’ll be like Opec to the power of 10” – states without the material would be at the mercy of a cartel of foreign suppliers.

Abdul Minty, who served for most of the past two decades as South Africa’s top nuclear policymaker and who is now South Africa's ambassador to UN agencies headquartered in Geneva, said rather it was the US that was recalcitrant.

Even as it campaigned to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, he said, it refused to part with its own.

Stocks of fissile materials held by countries outside the small club of nuclear-weapons states, he said, were just “not that important” a threat, compared with the thousands of nuclear weapons held by the bigger powers. “People who smoke can’t tell someone else not to smoke,” Minty said.

Waldo Stumpf, a long-time atomic energy official in South Africa who presided over the dismantling of the apartheid-era bomb programme, said in an interview that handing over the highly enriched uranium “was never part of the thinking here”.

“Not within Mr de Klerk’s government. Not afterwards, when the ANC took over,” he said.

“Why would we give away a commercially valuable material that has earned a lot of foreign exchange? Why would we do that?”

* This article comes from the Centre for Public Integrity, a non-partisan, non-profit investigative news organisation.

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.

Washington Post

saengine:
Perhaps you think you are talking to a group of 5 year olds who cant read. This post proves you a mentally sick, attention seeking fraud.


35 km range = surface to air variant of PL-9C missile.
22km range = air to air variant

F00l

Did you not read your own link? Are you mentally sick? Look at the red box in your screengrab. Just next to it....what does it say?? ALTITUTE LIMIT 6.5km.

What kind of air to air missile has an ALTITUDE LIMIT of only 6.5km?? Gripen pilots will fly at 22 000 feet, shoot your rust buckets down, while chatting to their wives on whatsapp. And there will be nothing you can do about it.

You see how you have been sent to your hole? How your stupi.dity has been exposed? Waste of space.

agaugust:
Nope, you are the victim of Soweto breed sub-standard South African education.

Fool, it is the same missile PL-9C fired as air to air OR air to ground, same missile, same specifications NO difference in the missile itself.

Show me where army recognition says the air launch and ground launch PL-9C have different maximum ranges, show me below...

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html

The fuel load inside a missile determines it's range, the fuel load is the same in both variants, there is no small size or big size PL-9C missile, they are both same capacity and same 115 kg weight, same fuel load, and your science is too poor to let you know that fuel load determines range of a traveling rocket propellant.

22 km is used for air to air usual range, 35 km is the maximum effective range air to air or ground to air.

That is why army recognition data says Range = 22 km, Maximum Range = 35 km.

You thought I did not read army recognition analysis before I posted it? Mumu domingo

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html

PL-9C = PL-9C no matter the launcher system you use.

Fool, altitude only applies when the PL-9C is fired from the ground based launcher, the missile is used both as air to air. and ground to air combat.

The ground launch had ceiling or altitude because the fire control radar is fixed on ground, the air launch is at any altitude the the jet fighter can fly to, F-7 flies at almost 18 km altitude and is BETTER than the Gripen 15 km altitude. Use your coconut head when you read.

F-7 jet has superior altitude to the Gripen so NAF can fire missiles at SAAF from over your fvcking coconut heads above your level !

F-7 jet missile range 35 km near BVR

Gripen jet missile range 25 km short range !

NAF kills SAAF.....I have rattled you Southies into sweating and fainting mode today

.

agaugust:
You Southies are a bunch of illiterates, F-7 jets have had all-weather combat capabilities since 1988 ! Fools !

"The J-7M's design was certified and adopted in 1988, giving the J-7 family an aircraft with all-weather capabilities. The successful development of the J-7M shows that it is feasible to import advanced foreign airborne equipment to improve the performance of domestic aircraft and thus to promote exports."

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/j-7m.htm

You think Pakistan will field a jet that is not all weather against mighty India?

You think Nigeria will buy a $ 15 million jet that is not all weather capable? Mumu domingoes, all of you in Soweto are mumustic mumus

F-7 jet is all weather with Italian Grifo Radar.

A-Darter cannot destroy a small air to air missile, it was tested ONLY against a Skua drone, big drone !

SAAF has ZERO A-Darter missiles today, so no argument, you DON'T have it.


Nigeria too has ground radars with 500 km range, so don't bring ground radar to this air to air battle.

SAAF Gripen jet missile range 25 km .

NAF F-7 jet missile range 35 km....almost BVR.

South African air force is dead from a near BVR distance, your pilots wont even see Nigerian F-7 jet from our BVR position 37 km away, we fire missile at 35 km away.....Mandela will weep inside his grave as we demolish his air force
.

MikeCZAR:
It seems you're the illiterate one here, cause you can't comprehend what I'm telling you.
Your fighter jets stay on the ground at night and during bad weather.
All your jets would intercepted from behind and from the flanks all will be shot, cause thee Gripen will always have a upper hands.
They won't even know what shot them down.

Msauza:
THAT IS FOR NIGERIYOOO, ONLY ONE OF IT AT THE CENTER OF ABUJA WILL BRING THE WHOLE OF NIGERIA TO A STAND STILL AND RUN TO WASHINGTON FOR HELP.

Msauza:
PL-9C has a range of 22 KM.


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PL-9



Your obsolete F7 has a poor detection radar, a very important element in any fighter jet. Any fighter with poor detection radar it means it can not be good for offensive and thus is a bad dog fighter.

Griffin has an important element which will detect F7 from over 120 KM away.


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS-05/A


A Gripen jet will detect your F7 Jets from over 60KM away without your poor pilots realising that the gripen jets are on the nearby. That will serve as an advantage for gripen pilots to launch an attack first. F7 are not a good platform to launch BVR because of the detection radar which has severe limitations. A gripen jet will still defeat F7 jets even if they were armed with BVRs.


The BVR require stealth fighters which can detect an enemy aircraft from far distances and often earlier than before it could be detect. Tell me how will it help you to be armed with 60 KM range BVR when your radar is only 25 KMs? That does not make sense.

patches689:
You are talking about two different configurations


But ok - lets play along with your stup1dity

Gripen detects the F7 first (because better radar)

Gripen climbs to above 6km altitude

PLC missile canmot go that high

Gripen shoots down defenceless F7.

So in your crazy fantasy world it fails

And in reality you are talking about teo different missiles

agaugust:
Wikipedia is an inferior source that even you can edit todsy and post wrong information.

My source is the world respected army recognition website and is very reliable.

NAF F-7 jets have PL-9C missile with near BVR range of 35 km...NAF out-ranges SAAF Gripen jets in combat...SAAF is finished o!

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html

.

agaugust:
You are very wrong !

F-7 altitude is far superior to Gripen !

NAF F-7 climbs to over 17 km ceiling.

SAAF inferior Gripen climbs to max 15 km ceiling.

From extra 2 km advantage above the head of the Gripen, F-7 jet fires near BVR missile PL-9C from 35 km away.

South African air force is wiped out in 5 minutes (((((((( BOOM BOOM BOOM )))))))

NAF is more powerful than SAAF .

CASE CLOSED

agaugust:
Wikipedia is an inferior source that even you can edit todsy and post wrong information.

My source is the world respected army recognition website and is very reliable.

NAF F-7 jets have PL-9C missile with near BVR range of 35 km...NAF out-ranges SAAF Gripen jets in combat...SAAF is finished o!

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html

.

patches689:
1. Unless you are talking about groundlaunching the PlC-9 then its range is not BVR
2. What mobile ground search radars do you have?

agaugust:
Both air launch and ground launch PL-9C are the same missile, same specs, same weight, same size, same fuel load, same range.

Show me where army recognition says the PL-9C missiles are different in fuel load, fuel determines range !

Same missiles, different launching locations, one from air , other from ground, same missile, same size, same fuel, same range.

NAF has a near BVR missile.....SAAF is dead stuck with short range toys

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html
.

Patchesagain:
[size=16pt]its said that the air to air version has a ~20km range BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT[/size]

http://www.catic.cn/indexPortal/home/index.do?cmd=goToChannel&cid=746&columnid=1914&cpid=1653&dataid=4297&columnType=102&likeType=view&ckw=ATAM#

The two missiles are completely different - this is obvious to us all.

You shamless liar and fraud. Are you so scared of honest debat that you must creat false information?

agaugust:
[size=16pt]

Bwahahaha....you whipped yourself

It is NOT a Government source, just a website from China, show me government ministry logo on that source

That website is for a commercial business named CATIC....a multi-national, NOT Chinese givernment.

""To develop CATIC into a multi-national corporation with international competitiveness" is the vision of CATIC. With "deeper understanding of the market and special care for the customer."

http://www.catic.cn/indexPortal/home/index.do?cmd=goToChannel&cid=750&language=US

Your source did NOT say air to air version !

It only said PL-9C Multi-purpose missile....multi-purpose, air or ground launched !

Also, it posted the usual raneg only, NOT the maximum range, BUT army recognition post both usual RANGE and MAXIMUM RANGE.

Your source does NOT say maximum range

NAF has PL-9C missile maximum range 35 km to kill all SAAF aircraft from BVR range

GAME OVER !

[/size]

Patchesagain:
[size=13pt]You said both missiles are the same... why can only only go to 6000 ft and the other to 20 000ft?[/size]

I feel sorry for you

saengine:
http://www.strategycenter.net/research/pubID.181/pub_detail.asp


"By the mid 1990s China’s main missile maker Luoyang had developed the PL-9, which took the fuselage of the Python-3, attached different guidance fins, and incorporated a copy of the Ukrainian Arsenel helmet sight, called the TK-14 in Chinese service, to make a new AAM.[6] The latest PL-9C features an increase in range of 22km, up from 15km for the PL-9, PL-8 and Python-3 AAMs."

agaugust:
[size=13pt]
Nope i feel sorry for your scientific brain deficiency.

PL-9C launched from ground, the fire control radar is fixed on the ground and needs contact, but limited to 6.5 km above ground level.

PL-9C launched from air, the fire control radar is inside the F-7 jet that is already in the air from 1 km to 17 km above ground level, so ceiling does not apply .

Your Soweto school did not develop your brains to think beyond the English language on a website, the science behind it is too advanced for a South African citizen....you have the second dullest brains in the world....confirmed

NAF PL-9C missile on F-7NI jet has near BVR range 35 km...We have put Southies into panic mode today o !
.[/size]

Patchesagain:
[size=20pt]Augubgugugug

According to your own link max range is 22km

Argument over. I am not validating your ridiculous claims anymore.

[/size]

saengine:
NO NO NO.....thats the "usual range". The range the missile "usually" hits something....not the maxinum range

saengine:
NO NO NO.....thats the "usual range". The range the missile "usually" hits something....not the maxinum range

agaugust:
NO NO NO.....35 km is MAXIMUM EFFECTIVE RANGE according to army recognition below....effective kill range is 35 km...

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html


Usual range is commonly expected use range for missiles and the usual range for A-Darter missile is ONLY 10 km, while maximum effective range is 20 km for A-Darter .

NAF has F-7 jet with near BVR missile range 35 km to destroy the entire SAAF in 5 minutes.

You guys are sweating like mad.men on your laptops since yesterday o, because of NAF near BVR missile 35 km range PL-9C
.

agaugust:
[s]NO NO NO.....35 km is MAXIMUM EFFECTIVE RANGE according to army recognition below....effective kill range is 35 km...

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html


Usual range is commonly expected use range for missiles and the usual range for A-Darter missile is ONLY 10 km, while maximum effective range is 20 km for A-Darter .

NAF has F-7 jet with near BVR missile range 35 km to destroy the entire SAAF in 5 minutes.

You guys are sweating like mad.men on your laptops since yesterday o, because of NAF near BVR missile 35 km range PL-9C [/s]
.

agaugust:
NO NO NO.....35 km is MAXIMUM EFFECTIVE RANGE according to army recognition below....effective kill range is 35 km...
http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html
Usual range is commonly expected use range for missiles and the usual range for A-Darter missile is ONLY 10 km, while maximum effective range is 20 km for A-Darter .
NAF has F-7 jet with near BVR missile range 35 km to destroy the entire SAAF in 5 minutes.
You guys are sweating like mad.men on your laptops since yesterday o, because of NAF near BVR missile 35 km range PL-9C
.

Patchesagain:
Range is 22km - according to your own source.

agaugust:
Yes, thanks for proving me right, range = 22 km, maximum range = 35 km according the same source. Thank you for agreeing with me
.

agaugust:
NAF has F-7 jet with near BVR missile range 35 km to destroy the entire SAAF in 5 minutes.

You guys are sweating like mad.men on your laptops since yesterday o, because of NAF near BVR missile 35 km range PL-9C
.

agaugust:
Both air launch and ground launch PL-9C are the same missile, same specs, same weight, same size, same fuel load, same range.

Show me where army recognition says the PL-9C missiles are different in fuel load, fuel determines range !

Same missiles, different launching locations, one from air , other from ground, same missile, same size, same fuel, same range.

NAF has a near BVR missile.....SAAF is dead stuck with short range toys

http://www.armyrecognition.com/china_chinese_army_missile_systems_vehicles/pl-9c_shorad_short_range_ground-to-air_missile_technical_data_sheet_specifications_pictures_video.html

There is ONLY ONE type of PL-9C missile in this world, no matter the launch platform !
.

patches689:
Nigeria has no PGM's

Patchesagain:
No

Range: 500m-22km

If that is the range it can operate in then that is the range it can operate in.