Free eBooks Being Nuclear: Africans And The Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press) Available To Downloads
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.
Series: MIT Press
Paperback: 480 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press (August 29, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262526867
ISBN-13: 978-0262526869
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #252,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #32 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Energy Production & Extraction > Nuclear #61 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Trades & Tariffs #102 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
Ms. Hecht's newest book, BEING NUCLEAR: AFRICANS AND THE GLOBAL URANIUM TRADE, is thoroughly researched, and becomes a fascinating, knowledge rich read for even a layman. It is daring and informative, and confronts real life issues and their consequences.
This work is an absolute essential not only when attempting to discover integral facts about the uranium trade in Africa, but to illuminate the history of uranium and its status as either a nuclear or banal commodity. From investigating the nebulous ways in which this ore was initially priced to revealing the ways in which its 'nuclearity' and health hazards were ambiguously or opaquely handled, especially in the light of Africa's invisibilty in neocolonial eyes, I believe the truth of the history of the uranium trade should be standard knowledge for all, and, especially for those who truly wish to examine the past, present and future of the nuclear industry. If so much of the inner workings of this trade have been hidden from the general public, how then should the general public be willing to place its faith in the reassurances of those who propose the ultimate safety and ethical soundness of this as a power source.
This is a very well written book about the sourcing of Uranium from African countries for use in both nuclear weapons and power plants. The author does this by telling the story of the Uranium mines in Gabon, Congo (Zaire), Niger, and South Africa. The second half of the book focuses on describing the bad labor conditions in the mines; the first establishes a line of argumentation about “nuclearity” – which is an historically contingent concept that relates developments in the Cold War and later the post September 11 world to the way people think about the uranium deposits in Africa. The author provides particularly interesting insights about how the “market” for uranium developed. She highlights the importance of the dual-use nature of uranium and the limited visibility of the trade in uranium for weapons use. The book provides useful background for understanding the defense of the apartheid regime in South Africa by Britain and the United States and attempts by the administration of George W. Bush to justify the war in Iraq in 1993 by citing transfers of “yellow cake” from Niger as evidence of the resumption of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
Hecht writes on the invisibility of nuclear risks to workers in the industry on the surface, but the book and its theoretical arguments have relevance far beyond the limits of the nuclear topic at hand. The book is dense but read the first chapter to get an excellent situation of the arguments and summary of each chapter ahead. From that point, the detailed individual chapters can be read independently.
Very boring -Looking for Physics of Nuclear make up Not easy to to follow --Not exciting //To political in Nature
Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (MIT Press) The Atom and the Fault: Experts, Earthquakes, and Nuclear Power (MIT Press) Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World Terrigenous Clastic Depositional Systems: Applications to Petroleum, Coal, and Uranium Exploration The Elements Beyond Uranium 200 Beading Tips, Techniques & Trade Secrets: An Indispensable Compendium of Technical Know-How and Troubleshooting Tips (200 Tips, Techniques & Trade Secrets) The SLAVE TRADE: THE STORY OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE: 1440 - 1870 Max Planck Commentaries on World Trade Law: WTO - World Economic Order, World Trade Law Zeitmanagement mit Microsoft Office Outlook, 8. Auflage (einschl. Outlook 2010): Die Zeit im Griff mit der meistgenutzten Bürosoftware - Strategien, Tipps ... (Versionen 2003 - 2010) (German Edition) Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in 19th-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Mediterranean Africans into Creoles: Slavery, Ethnicity, and Identity in Colonial Costa Rica (Diálogos Series) Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Studies in Comparative World History) Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity, and Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Blacks in the Diaspo) The Africans of Haiti Nuclear War Survival Skills: Lifesaving Nuclear Facts and Self-Help Instructions Nuclear Energy, Seventh Edition: An Introduction to the Concepts, Systems, and Applications of Nuclear Processes Nuclear Weapons Databook: Volume I - U.S. Nuclear Forces and Capabilities Nuclear Chemical Engineering (1957) (McGraw-Hill Series in Nuclear Engineering) Nuclear War Survival Skills (Upgraded 2012 Edition) (Red Dog Nuclear Survival) NUCLEAR WAR SURVIVAL MANUAL, PROTECTION IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
