"The switch marks a further milestone in the government's programme to ensure that the safety of nuclear materials is enhanced globally," said the country's Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs.

Some 25 kilogrammes (55 pounds) of high enriched uranium (HEU) -- classified as such because it contained more than 20 percent of the Uranium 235 isotope -- would be required to make a basic bomb, experts have said.

South Africa's chief nuclear director at Pelindaba, some 30 kilometreswest of Pretoria, could not confirm how much HEU was still being stored on the premises.

"That information cannot be divulged," Tseliso Maqubela told SAPA news agency, saying he was prevented from doing so by the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which South Africa was a signatory.

The SAFARI-1 reactor was commissioned in the 1960s, and is now mainly used for the production of radio-isotopes for nuclear medicine.

In a statement the minerals and energy affairs department said the remaining HEU at Pelindaba "will generally be applied to the manufacturing of medical isotopes... used in nuclear medicine diagnostics."

Minerals and Energy minister Lindiwe Hendricks said the conversion of the reactor "is just one of a number of measures that we will be announcing, which are aimed at ensuring the sustainability and integrity of our nuclear sector."

The conversion will take about three years to complete.

South Africa's foray into the world of nuclear weapons started in 1948, the same year the white apartheid government came into power, with the establishement of the Atomic Energy Board (AEB).

During the 1970s however, white South Africa's security situation deteriorated rapidly and in 1978 government approved a "nuclear deterrent strategy."

Towards the end of the 1980s the situation around South Africa with the withdrawal of 50,000 Cuban troops in Angola, UN Security Council Resolution 435 was put into place leading to Namibian independence, and the collapse of communism.

Internally the situation in South Africa was also changing and the country's last white president Frederik De Klerk announced the dismantling of the country's nuclear weapons just under a year before the white government handed over power to the black majority, led by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

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