South Africa is a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has signed and ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), being one of the 44 listed countries needed to sign and ratify for the CTBT to enter into force.

South Africa has two French (Framatome) built reactors. Construction started in the 1970's and they are both at the Koeberg site, east of Cape Town, which supply 6% of the country's electricity and 2% of its commercial primary energy. The reactors are the only operating nuclear power plants in the African continent.

The South African State owned utility Eskom is heavily involved in the development of the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR), which is one of the so-called Generation IV reactor designs.

South Africa had a clandestine nuclear weapons programme from the late 1960's but in July 1991 signed the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. The government banned any further development, manufacture, marketing, import, or export of nuclear weapons or explosives, as required by the NPT.

Following South Africa's accession to the NPT, a Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement was signed with the IAEA on 16 September 1991.

The extensive nature of South Africa's nuclear fuel cycle required not only considerable inspection resources but also extensive co-operation on the part of the State authorities in providing access to defunct facilities and to historical accounting and operating records.

In March 1993 President de Klerk admitted that South Africa had previously developed a limited nuclear capability but that it had been dismantled and destroyed before South Africa acceded to the NPT. The IAEA sent experts to visit the facilities involved in the abandoned program and to review historical data. The IAEA declared it had completed its inspection in late 1994 and that South Africa's nuclear weapons facilities had been dismantled.

Read the profile on South Africa from the Model Nuclear Inventory (pdf), produced by the Reaching Critical Will project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.