Pelindaba

The Pelindaba nuclear research facility is situated near the Hartbeespoort Dam, west of Pretoria in the Republic of South Africa. It is South Africa's main Nuclear Research Centre, run by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, and was the location where South Africa's atomic bombs of the 1970s were developed, constructed and subsequently stored.

Armed attack on the facility

In November 2007 there was an attack on the plant. Four armed men infiltrated the facility, headed towards a control panel in a control room in the facility's eastern block and shot a worker when he resisted. [ [http://www.pretorianews.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=vn20071109061218448C528585 Pretoria News ] ]

Shortly after midnight on Nov. 8, four armed men broke into the Pelindaba nuclear facility 18 miles west of Pretoria, a site where hundreds of kilograms of weapons-grade uranium are stored. According to the South African Nuclear Energy Corp., the state-owned entity that runs the Pelindaba facility, these four "technically sophisticated criminals" deactivated several layers of security, including a 10,000-volt electrical fence, suggesting insider knowledge of the system. Though their images were captured on closed-circuit television, they were not detected by security officers because nobody was monitoring the cameras at the time. [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/19/AR2007121901857.html Washington Post, Dec 20, 2007, Op-Ed by Micah Zenko] .]

ee also

*Nuclear terrorism

References

ee also

*Treaty of Pelindaba - African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty
*South Africa and weapons of mass destruction