Atomic Junction

Atomic Junction PDF Author: Abena Dove Osseo-Asare
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108471242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
An innovative account of the first nuclear programme in independent Africa, centring on the promises and perils of atomic research in Ghana.

Atomic Junction

Atomic Junction PDF Author: Abena Dove Osseo-Asare
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108471242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
An innovative account of the first nuclear programme in independent Africa, centring on the promises and perils of atomic research in Ghana.

Being Nuclear

Being Nuclear PDF Author: Gabrielle Hecht
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262300672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
The hidden history of African uranium and what it means—for a state, an object, an industry, a workplace—to be “nuclear.” Uranium from Africa has long been a major source of fuel for nuclear power and atomic weapons, including the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In 2003, after the infamous “yellow cake from Niger,” Africa suddenly became notorious as a source of uranium, a component of nuclear weapons. But did that admit Niger, or any of Africa's other uranium-producing countries, to the select society of nuclear states? Does uranium itself count as a nuclear 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 nuclear order and the relationships between “developing nations” (often former colonies) and “nuclear powers” (often former colonizers). Hecht enters African nuclear worlds, focusing on miners and the occupational hazard of radiation exposure. Could a mine be a nuclear 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 nuclear world, and the nuclear world in Africa. By doing so, she remakes our understanding of the nuclear age.

Spies in the Congo

Spies in the Congo PDF Author: Susan Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1787380653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Spies in the Congo is the untold story of one of the most tightly-guarded secrets of the Second World War: America's desperate struggle to secure enough uranium to build its atomic bomb. The Shinkolobwe mine in the Belgian Congo was the most important deposit of uranium yet discovered anywhere on earth, vital to the success of the Manhattan Project. Given that Germany was also working on an atomic bomb, it was an urgent priority for the US to prevent uranium from the Congo being diverted to the enemy - a task entrusted to Washington's elite secret intelligence agents. Sent undercover to colonial Africa to track the ore and to hunt Nazi collaborators, their assignment was made even tougher by the complex political reality and by tensions with Belgian and British officials. A gripping spy-thriller, Spies in the Congo is the true story of unsung heroism, of the handful of good men - and one woman - in Africa who were determined to deny Hitler his bomb.

Atomic Audit

Atomic Audit PDF Author: Stephen I. Schwartz
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815722946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 750

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Book Description
Since 1945, the United States has manufactured and deployed more than 70,000 nuclear weapons to deter and if necessary fight a nuclear war. Some observers believe the absence of a third world war confirms that these weapons were a prudent and cost-effective response to the uncertainty and fear surrounding the Soviet Union's military and political ambitions during the cold war. As early as 1950, nuclear weapons were considered relatively inexpensive— providing "a bigger bang for a buck"—and were thoroughly integrated into U.S. forces on that basis. Yet this assumption was never validated. Indeed, for more than fifty years scant attention has been paid to the enormous costs of this effort—more than $5 trillion thus far—and its short and long-term consequences for the nation. Based on four years of extensive research, Atomic Audit is the first book to document the comprehensive costs of U.S. nuclear weapons, assembling for the first time anywhere the actual and estimated expenditures for the program since its creation in 1940. The authors provide a unique perspective on U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear weapons, tracking their development from the Manhattan Project of World War II to the present day and assessing each aspect of the program, including research, development, testing, and production; deployment; command, control, communications, and intelligence; and defensive measures. They also examine the costs of dismantling nuclear weapons, the management and disposal of large quantities of toxic and radioactive wastes left over from their production, compensation for persons harmed by nuclear weapons activities, nuclear secrecy, and the economic implications of nuclear deterrence. Utilizing archival and newly declassified government documents and data, this richly documented book demonstrates how a variety of factors—the open-ended nature of nuclear deterrence, faulty assumptions about the cost-effectiveness of nuclear weapons, regular misrepresentati

The Bomb

The Bomb PDF Author: Nic Von Wielligh
Publisher: Litera Publications
ISBN: 9781920188481
Category : Nuclear disarmament
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
South Africa's Bomb kept the world guessing for years. Six-and-a- half nuclear bombs had been secretly built and destroyed, former South African President F.W. de Klerk announced in 1993. No other country has ever voluntarily destroyed its nuclear arsenal. From 1975 Nic von Wielligh was involved in the production of nuclear weapons material, the dismantling of the nuclear weapons and the provision of evidence of South Africa's bona fides to the international community. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared South Africa's Initial Report to be the most comprehensive and professional that they had ever received. In this book the nuclear physicist and his daughter Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn tell the gripping story of the splitting of the atom and the power it releases. It is an account of ground-breaking research and the scientists responsible; it deals with uranium enrichment, the arms race and South Africa's secret programme. The Bomb: South Africa's nuclear programme is a story of nuclear explosions, espionage, smuggling of nuclear materials and swords that became ploughshares.

Revisiting South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Program

Revisiting South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Program PDF Author: David Albright
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781536845655
Category : National security
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
In 1989, South Africa made the momentous decision to abandon its nuclear weapons, making it the first and still the only country that has produced nuclear weapons and given them up. Over thirty years, the apartheid regime had created a remarkably sophisticated capability to build nuclear weapons-both the nuclear warhead and advanced military systems to deliver them. The program was born in secret and remained so until its end. The government initially sought to dismantle it in secret. It hoped to avoid any negative international consequences of possessing nuclear weapons. The apartheid government's strategy did not work, because too many intelligence agencies knew about South Africa's nuclear weapons. Faced with intense pressure, South Africa's President F.W. de Klerk reversed course and adopted a policy of transparency in 1993. However, he decided to hide many of its aspects. Nonetheless, most of the remaining secrets emerged over the ensuing 25 years. Revisiting South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Program draws on previously secret information to provide the first comprehensive, technically-oriented look at South Africa's nuclear weapons program; how it grew, evolved, and ended. It also finds lessons for today's nuclear proliferation cases.

Seeking the Bomb

Seeking the Bomb PDF Author: Vipin Narang
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691172625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
The first systematic look at the different strategies that states employ in their pursuit of nuclear weapons Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons. The question of how states pursue nuclear weapons has received little attention. Seeking the Bomb is the first book to analyze this topic by examining which strategies of nuclear proliferation are available to aspirants, why aspirants select one strategy over another, and how this matters to international politics. Looking at a wide range of nations, from India and Japan to the Soviet Union and North Korea to Iraq and Iran, Vipin Narang develops an original typology of proliferation strategies—hedging, sprinting, sheltered pursuit, and hiding. Each strategy of proliferation provides different opportunities for the development of nuclear weapons, while at the same time presenting distinct vulnerabilities that can be exploited to prevent states from doing so. Narang delves into the crucial implications these strategies have for nuclear proliferation and international security. Hiders, for example, are especially disruptive since either they successfully attain nuclear weapons, irrevocably altering the global power structure, or they are discovered, potentially triggering serious crises or war, as external powers try to halt or reverse a previously clandestine nuclear weapons program. As the international community confronts the next generation of potential nuclear proliferators, Seeking the Bomb explores how global conflict and stability are shaped by the ruthlessly pragmatic ways states choose strategies of proliferation.

Atomic Anxiety

Atomic Anxiety PDF Author: Frank Sauer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137533749
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
With the concept of 'Atomic Anxiety', this book offers a novel perspective on one of the most important and longstanding puzzles of international politics: the non-use of U.S. nuclear weapons. By focusing on the fear surrounding nuclear weapons, it explains why nuclear deterrence and the nuclear taboo are working at cross purposes in practice.

The Wretched Atom

The Wretched Atom PDF Author: Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197526926
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
A groundbreaking narrative of how the United States offered the promise of nuclear technology to the developing world and its gamble that other nations would use it for peaceful purposes. After the Second World War, the United States offered a new kind of atom that differed from the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This atom would cure diseases, produce new foods, make deserts bloom, and provide abundant energy for all. It was an atom destined for the formerly colonized, recently occupied, and mostly non-white parts of the world that were dubbed the "wretched of the earth" by Frantz Fanon. The "peaceful atom" had so much propaganda potential that President Dwight Eisenhower used it to distract the world from his plan to test even bigger thermonuclear weapons. His scientists said the peaceful atom would quicken the pulse of nature, speeding nations along the path of economic development and helping them to escape the clutches of disease, famine, and energy shortfalls. That promise became one of the most misunderstood political weapons of the twentieth century. It was adopted by every subsequent US president to exert leverage over other nations' weapons programs, to corner world markets of uranium and thorium, and to secure petroleum supplies. Other countries embraced it, building reactors and training experts. Atomic promises were embedded in Japan's postwar recovery, Ghana's pan-Africanism, Israel's quest for survival, Pakistan's brinksmanship with India, and Iran's pursuit of nuclear independence. As The Wretched Atom shows, promoting civilian atomic energy was an immense gamble, and it was never truly peaceful. American promises ended up exporting violence and peace in equal measure. While the United States promised peace and plenty, it planted the seeds of dependency and set in motion the creation of today's expanded nuclear club.

How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs and Then Abandoned Its Nuclear Weapons Program

How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs and Then Abandoned Its Nuclear Weapons Program PDF Author: Al J. Venter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description