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SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
of Mines was required before prospecting for or mining of 'prescribed material' could take place.112
So
much for the background, scientific, technological and governmental.
It was then the task of the mining industry to 'deliver the goods';
that was a question of economics and finance.
♦ XXXVII ♦
From the beginning it was necessary for the mining industry to be closely associated with the technical discussions involved:
The
Prime Minister is understood to have informed the Transvaal Chamber of
Mines very fully as to the position as it then existed [i.e. early
1947] and they on behalf of the mining industry offered to provide
their fullest cooperation and to accept responsibility for the
construction and operation of the plants as and when they were
established.114
The
consulting metallurgists of all the mining groups became members of the
Metallurgical Research Sub-Committee of the Uranium Research Committee
(the original co-ordinating body), on which the mining industry was
also represented, and when the Atomic Energy Board was set up in virtue
of the Atomic Energy Act of 1948, it included two representatives of
the mining industry, one of whom was Mr. R. B. Hagart of Anglo American
Corporation, who has therefore been intimately associated with the
uranium enterprise at the highest level from the very beginning. Two
mining houses had, at a very early date, provided pilot plants at two
of their mines—Anglo American Corporation and Central Mining—at Western
Reefs and Blyvooruit-zicht respectively. Owing to delays in the
delivery of equipment of the latter, the pilot plant at Western Reefs
was the first to come into operation, in late December 1947.115 Moreover, when, in 1950, the first definite agreements were arrived at between the Atomic Energy Board
112 Prescribed
material was defined as meaning 'uranium, thorium or any other material
declared by proclamation to be such for the purposes of the Act, and
includes any substance which contains uranium or thorium or such
material in such quantities or concentrations as may be specified by
proclamation'. Such determinations were made by Proclamations 32 and
195 of 1950.
113 This
section owes much to conversations with Mr. R. B. Hagart, deputy
chairman of the Anglo American Corporation, and to the article which he
contributed to the symposium already referred to. Vide 'National aspects of the uranium industry', originally published in 57 Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and reprinted in Uranium in South Africa, vol. II, p. 444 et sea.
114Taverner, op. cit., p. 133. 115 Taverner, p. 135.
