File talk:South Africa-Pelindaba01.jpg

Sorry! This nice picture of South Africa's Nuclear Facility is named incorrectly! The plant you see here is NOT called Pelindaba. It is Valindaba. It was built from the late 1970's and completed in the 1980's. I had an office there for two years during the construction phase, I should know! In short this is a short historical synopsis: Pelindaba (meaning "we have started to talk" and now called NECSA) was our first American Reactor used for research and development, called Safari-1 - medical isotopes and other. A new South African version of Uranium Enrichment was developed here after 1957. To test our more cost-effective enrichment process on an industrial scale, Little Valindaba, as we called it, was built between Pelindaba (Reactor) and this huge plant on the picture. Once success was achieved, a final full scale Uranium Enrichment Plant was planned and erected in order to get sufficient capacity to serve Koeberg Nuclear Power Station with enriched pellets and also to build some eight Nuclear Bombs on the quiet, similar to what was used by the USA on Hiroshima in 1945. That huge facility is VALINDABA (finished talking) what you see on the picture! The long iron clad building you see in the background was called Area 14. That is where the bulk of the enrichment process took place. The chimneys were there to release accidental radioactivity in case of an emergency. The huge circular towers were water cooling towers required for the enrichment process. The buildings directly in front of Area 14 were used for further and final processing. The smaller white plant in the foreground is still there and is used to purify their water.

After SA abandoned its nuclear capability under pressure from the USA in 1991, the entire plant was demolished and the buildings were re-occupied by everyday industrial manufacturers. The bombs were disassembled, but the expensive enriched cores are being stored underground at the original Pelindaba site which is now called NECSA. SA scientists at Pelindaba were the first to resolve the problem of terrorists stealing enriched Uranium in transit for medical therapy. Moly-99 (Molybdenum) was used to replace Uranium, as enriched Molybdenum is useless for making nuclear explosives which is what terrorists were after. The first delivery to Boston USA took place on the 6th of December 2010 and contributes a lot towards Americans’ peaceful sleep since nine eleven! A visit to the Visitors Centre at NECSA is highly recommended! — Preceding unsigned comment was added by 41.150.9.114 (talk) 04:27, 08 July 2016 (UTC)