South Africa has completed the construction of two new nuclear labs that will be used to train students and develop novel nuclear-physics detector technology. The Modern African Nuclear Detector Laboratories, or MANDELA, is a partnership between the University of York in the UK and the universities of Western Cape (UWC) and Zululand in South Africa.
Officially opened in late March, the MANDELA labs were built by refurbishing the nuclear laboratories at UWC and Zululand. Funding also went towards the development of fast digital electronics and data-acquisition systems at the lab. UWC nuclear physicist Nico Orce adds that the labs will allow scientists to develop technology for cancer imaging that can be “brought to the poor communities of South Africa and the African continent as a whole”. <<Read More>>