Uranium Mining in Southern Africa

Abstract

In the late 1940s and 1950s South Africa obtained the cooperation of Britain and America in the development of her nuclear science and technology and the exploitation of her uranium resources.¹ This was in exchange for a South African agreement to supply Britain and America with uranium for their nuclear weapons programmes. In an arrangement agreed with South African Prime Minister Smuts at the end of the Second World War and implemented by the Nationalist government which came to power after the 1948 general election, the wartime allies, through their jointly-owned Combined Development Agency (CDA), supplied money and expertise for the exploitation of South Africa’s uranium resources. As explained in Chapter 2, after the passage of the 1946 US Atomic Energy Act (the McMahon Act), the CDA represented the only major continuation of the wartime collaboration in nuclear development between Britain and America, who otherwise pursued their separate nuclear courses. Fallowing the war, both countries were keen to obtain as much uranium as possible. Although uranium is now recognised to be widespread in its abundance in the earth’s crust, it was considered at the time a scarce resource. (Recent official estimates of Western world uranium resources, including those of South Africa, are shown in Table 4.1.