Nuclear Facility Attacked In South Africa – Was Catastrophe Averted

Very little news is coming out of South Africa on this story and there has been no word yet on whether or not this was a terrorist attack. With the country’s nuclear agency threatening one newspaper and stating national security laws prohibit publishing an account of the attack, it may prove difficult to obtain additional information.

Here is what we do know…

Gunmen attacked the Pelindaba nuclear facility in South Afrrica Thursday morning, breaching security and gaining entry to a sealed control room.

Anton Gerber, Necsa emergency services operational officer spoke to the Pretoria News from his hospital bed hours after the attack.

He was shot in the chest when the gunmen stormed the facility’s emergency response control room in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The shooting comes four months after Necsa’s newly appointed services general manager Eric Lerata, 43, was gunned down in front of his Montana home after returning from a business trip in France.

Pelindaba is regarded as one of the country’s most secure national key points.

It is surrounded by electric fencing, has 24-hour CCTV surveillance, security guards and security controls and checkpoints.

The attack comes as the country prepares to preside over an International Atomic Energy Agency convention on nuclear safety.

The convention is aimed at achieving a high level of global nuclear safety via safety related technical co-operation; establishing and maintaining effective defences in nuclear installations against potential radiological hazards and preventing accidents with radiological consequences.

A visibly shaken Gerber, who was rushed to Eugene Marais hospital, on Thursday said that he was sitting in the control room with his fiancée Ria Meiring when he heard a loud bang.

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Wired offers provides additional context.

A Congressional Research Service study in 2005 entitled “Nuclear Power Plants: Vulnerability to Terrorist Attack,” argues that despite the heightened security measures imposed on nuclear facilities in the U.S. by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, industry has been slow to implement them.

In the past, security measures known as “buffers” or “layers” were considered the best way to restrict unauthorized access to such crucial infrastructure as a nuclear power plant’s control panel. Earlier this month, a man was discovered to be bringing a pipe bomb into a nuclear plant in Arizona – the largest one in the country in fact. If the perpetrators of the break-in at Pelindaba had been armed with such a bomb, it is doubtful that any existing buffers would have stopped a terrible outcome.