Being nuclear: Africans and the global uranium trade

Abstract

Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous yellow cake from Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa's other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of states? Does uranium itself count as a thing? In this book, Gabrielle Hecht lucidly probes the question of what it means for something--a state, an object, an industry, a workplace--to be nuclear. Hecht shows that questions about being nuclear--a state that she calls nuclearity--lie at the heart of today's global order and the relationships between developing nations (often former colonies) and nuclear powers (often former colonizers). Hecht enters African worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. Could a mine be a workplace if (as in some South African mines) its radiation levels went undetected and unmeasured? With this book, Hecht is the first to put Africa in the world, and the world in Africa. By doing so, she remakes our understanding of the age.

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