South Africa’s nuclear ambitious might be getting a shot in the arm, as an Australian mineral exploration company claims that there could be as much as ten times more uranium in the Karoo than originally thought.

Peninsula Energy has been exploring the area, and has already arrived at the figure of 25 854 tonnes of the stuff available. After doing intensive scientific calculations based on previous exploration by Esso Minerals done in the 1970s, it said that the Karoo could be hiding between 204 116 tonnes to 272 155 tonnes of raw uranium.

To put that in perspective, the entire world uses around 91 000 tonnes a year.

“Potentially, it’s a very significant mineral deposit. We’ve gone through scoping and pre-feasibility studies. That has been very positive. We think we can produce uranium from here even under the current environment,” CEO John Simpson told Fin24.

Uranium is used in nuclear reactors as a fuel source to provide nuclear-based power, but it can also be used in a weaponised form to produce weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Raw uranium needs to be enriched to U-235 first, which is a rather elaborate process.

But it doesn’t take a lot of uranium to make something destructive; for example the “Little Boy” bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II only used 0.91kg of uranium.

The chance of any country approaching South Africa for weaponised uranium is very slim, as very stringent protocols need to be followed; but we could sell the uranium as a fuel source.

At the going rate, uranium costs about R1 567 per kilogram, and early estimates by Peninsula Energy peg the mining at about 1 360 tonnes per year. The company is said to want to start mining in 2019, even though the uranium content of about 1 100 parts per million is considered low-grade ore as graded by the World Nuclear Association.

[Source – Fin24 , Image – CC by 2.0/ Sarah Kanouse