Africa and the Nuclear World: Labor, Occupational Health, and the Transnational Production of Uranium

摘要

What is Africa's place in the nuclear world? In 1995, a U.S. government report on nuclear proliferation did not mark Gabon, Niger, or Namibia as having any “nuclear activities.” Yet these same nations accounted for over 25 percent of world uranium production that year, and helped fuel nuclear power plants in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Experts had long noted that workers in uranium mines were “exposed to higher amounts of internal radiation than … workers in any other segment of the nuclear energy industry.” What, then, does it mean for a workplace, a technology, or a nation to be “nuclear?” What is at stake in that label, and how do such stakes vary by time and place?