APPARENT DISCREPANCIES: The Verification of South Africa's Nuclear Disarmament

Abstract

South Africa is the only state to have built nuclear weapons and voluntarily dismantled them. This thesis contributes to the understanding of how international verification efforts dealt with political and material uncertainties surrounding this nuclear disarmament process. In particular, it focuses on how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the international community resolved uncertainties surrounding South Africa’s highly enriched uranium (HEU) inventory declaration over the course of three years. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this thesis first conducts a technical analysis of HEU production and associated uncertainties in the South African pilot enrichment plant (Y-Plant). It does so using untapped archival documents describing the South African enrichment process as well as key plant design specifications from 1970. It then describes the internal processes of the two main IAEA investigations that took place from 1991 to 1993, building on a dozen interviews with key participants, including IAEA staff and inspectors, South African officials and engineers, and US officials. Finally, it contextualizes the material uncertainties uncovered by the IAEA as well as this thesis's own technical analysis with the larger political context in which South Africa was undergoing major transformations – first and foremost the end of the Apartheid Regime. Finally, this thesis shows that the successful resolution of the South African verification process and the broad international acceptance that South Africa had been acting in good faith is the result of a political process prevailing over material considerations.