Cape Town - The Congolese Civil Society of South Africa (CCSSA) will once again be hosting their annual commemorative event marking the 79th year since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A pivotal part of this historical event is lesser known. While under colonial rule by Belgium, the Shinkolobwe mine located in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was the source of the majority of the uranium used for the atomic bombs “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively.
The mine supplied nearly two-thirds of the uranium used in the bomb at Hiroshima and much of the plutonium used in the bomb used on Nagasaki. The miners were exploited to a vaste degree, labouring under dangerous conditions.
The society has hosted the commemorative event since 2015. This year, the seventh phase of “The Missing Link of Hiroshima & Nagasaki” series, will explore the theme ‘Humanity versus Nuclear Waste’.
The event will take place on August 3, 2024 from 1pm to 4pm at Krotoa Lecture Room 3001 Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch.
CCSSA chairperson Isaiah Mombilo said: “It's so important to have this event annually because the full narrative of the bombing is not yet complete and the road for reparation from the Congo side is still very far.”
“Since the day of the first nuclear disaster among mankind, the potential increase of nuclear waste is surrounding humanity by multiplying nuclear demand in military, energy and medical aspects.”
The event will include a number of speakers and performances.
One of the speakers, former Director of the National Nuclear Regulator, Peter Becker said nuclear waste, which is prone to radioactive decay, emits radiation which can damage body cells including the DNA.
“It doesn't help to burn it or to transform it in any way because it's the nucleus, so no chemical reaction such as burning renders it safe. It can just change form from maybe a gas to a liquid, to a solid but it stays radioactive and depending on the material, it can stay dangerously radioactive for a few hundred years, a few hours, or in the case of plutonium for a few tens of thousands of years.”
There has been no successful discarding of high level nuclear waste anywhere in the world with the only feasible manner seemed to be deep geological storage where a deep hole is dug and nuclear waste is placed deep down.
“But then there are complications like what happens if the canisters corrode and water comes to the surface and carries the radioactive material with it,” Becker said.
“There’s no plan yet what to do with it in South Africa, no concrete plan and that means we don't have any idea what it is going to cost to dispose of it and we don't know what burden it's going to be on future generations.”
Nuclear power stations produce nuclear waste and depending on the level of radioactivity, the waste is divided into three categories- low level and intermediate level waste, and used or spent fuel. Vaalputs, situated in Namaqualand, is the country’s official disposal site for nuclear waste and is managed by the National Radioactive Waste Disposal Institute (NRWDI). The waste is stored in trenches ten metres deep.
“Recently the National Nuclear Regulator made a decision to allow at least one of the units at Koeberg to operate for another 20 years subject to certain conditions but they haven't yet done any kind of impact assessment on what that extra waste that will be produced over the 20 years will have on communities, and particularly marginalised communities in the Northern Cape around the Vaalputs area, Kamieskroon and so on who were not consulted when the waste site was first done back in the 80s when there was no environmental impact assessment done and there’s also not been any environmental impact assessment done on the consequences of disposing more waste in the Vaalputs area.”
Cape Argus