SOUTH AFRICA: Yellow Mud

South Africa’s Prime Minister Daniel Malan pressed a stubby finger to a small gold button one day last week and touched off a $112 million uranium industry. There had been hints that South Africa was in the atomic business, but this was the first firm news that the country was producing uranium on a scale that is expected to net $84 million a year.

Back in 1945 the late Prime Minister Jan Christian Smuts phoned Calvin Stowe McLean, president of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines: “Is it true that there’s uranium in our gold mines?” McLean told Smuts: “Yes, but it is of no commercial value.” Said Smuts (who knew about the Manhattan Project): “I want to know how much there is and how we can get it out.” From this conversation grew a plan to combine uranium production with gold production (both from the same ore). In his Atomic Energy Act, Smuts put a clamp (20 years in prison, $15,000 fine) on all discussion of the project, so that South African newspapers did not dare even reprint articles from overseas newspapers.

The area chosen for the development was the West Rand Consolidated gold mine on the Witwatersrand field near Johannesburg. After removal of the gold by the cyanide process, the tailings (i.e., waste) are treated by a secret chemical process to produce uranium oxide, which in its exportable form looks just like yellow mud. The project will extend to all other Rand mines, which will jointly share a giant uranium refinery.

Chief buyer of South African uranium oxide will be the U.S., with Britain, which put up some of the capital, making purchases on a smaller scale. Said Prime Minister Malan: “It must give satisfaction to our partners in America and Britain that this valuable source of power is in the safekeeping of South Africa.”