IAEA regional workshop takes place in Zambia

ISS staff members Noel Stott and Nicolas Kasprzyk participated in an IAEA Regional Training Workshop on Security in Practice for the Uranium Ore Concentrate Industry, including during Transport from 8 - 12 June 2015 in Livingstone, Zambia. The workshop was funded by the US (National Nuclear Security Administration) and the EU Commission (Joint Research Centre).

Noel presented a paper providing an overview of ‘Global Nuclear Security Concerns and in particular for Uranium Ore Concentrate’, in the broader context of security concerns in general and in particular nuclear security concerns.

The event gathered regulators and operators from Benin, Botswana, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Namibia, Niger, Tanzania and Zambia, as well as resource persons from Australia, the United States (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Nuclear Regulatory Commission), the International Atomic Energy Agency, the European Commission (Joint Research Centre), the private sector (AREVA, AREVA-TNI, Gamma Safety Services, Innovative Solutions Unlimited LLC) and the academia (Institute for Security Studies and Danish Institute for International Studies).

29 November: Navigating nuclear traffic

Amelia Broodryk, Senior Researcher, Transnational Threats and International Crime Division, ISS Pretoria

The seizure of a kilogram of uranium and 90 ecstasy tablets in Durban, South Africa on 14 November presents an intriguing illicit trafficking case. A joint operation between the Durban Organised Crime Unit, Crime Intelligence, the Department of Minerals and the Department of Energy resulted in the arrest of two men in their early 20s, who now face charges of being in possession of drugs and uranium. Incidents of uranium smuggling are very rare, and this is one of only five confirmed seizures of smuggled uranium in South Africa in the past 20 years.

No double game in SA’s plan to enrich uranium

South Africa is fully within its rights as a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to explore the feasibility of enriching uranium and fuel fabrication provided this is done for peaceful purposes.

South Africa Has recently been accused of "playing both sides of the nuclear coin". This followed President Jacob Zuma’s speech at the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit last month, in which he said SA’s technical achievement in being able to generate medical isotopes through low enriched uranium (LEU) was "a welcome addition to the capability to produce such isotopes using highly enriched uranium (HEU)".

Zuma also said: "SA has adopted a policy on the beneficiation of our mineral resources, including uranium." Critics have suggested SA has a policy of enriching uranium and does not want to limit its options by giving up the production or use of HEU, and by implication will hold on to its existing stock of HEU, which it still has from the nuclear weapons programme of the apartheid government.

India hopes it can import uranium from South Africa

By Arvind Padmanabhan

Pretoria, (IANS) India hopes it can import uranium from South Africa by impressing upon Pretoria to favourably change its regime towards New Delhi, notwithstanding the implications of what is called the Treaty of Pelindaba.

Speaking to journalists on the margins of the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Summit, India’s envoy here Virendra Gupta said while South Africa has uranium deposits, India has now started talks on importing the fuel.

“It appears to us that there will need to be an exception,” Gupta said, referring to the African Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty that prohibits signatories from entering into nuclear commerce with any nation that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.