Uranium from Africa and the Power of Nuclear Things (Scholar's Award)

该项目由美国国家科学基金会科学技术社会项目支持，探讨了非洲铀生产的历史及其在全球和地方舞台上塑造核事物的概念，意义和用途方面的关键作用。在过去60年中的任何一年，非洲矿石都供应了西方世界25-50%的铀。这个项目追溯了铀的历史，重点是刚果、加蓬、纳米比亚、尼日尔、马达加斯加和南非。根据对三大洲的广泛档案研究和实地考察，该项目研究了这些地点的矿石生产历史，以及黄饼（加工矿石）从这些矿山到美国，欧洲和日本目的地的移动。它探讨了非洲铀矿如何成为核场所，非洲矿石在塑造跨国铀市场中的作用，以及铀矿工作的文化和实践（包括氡监测和职业健康问题），该项目旨在重塑学术界对“核时代”的看法，并提出理解跨国技术网络的新方法。这是第一个利用非洲资源审查非洲铀生产的项目。从经验上讲，发展这种理解很重要，不仅因为非洲的矿石生产在历史上占了全球铀贸易的很大一部分，而且因为非洲大陆目前正在经历有史以来最大的铀繁荣。从概念上讲，将非洲铀置于核历史的中心揭示了如何在科学，技术，政治或职业上将一种材料或活动称为“核”往往是一个有争议的问题。这一认定的利害关系很大，而且仍然很大，对铀和其他放射性材料的法律的和非法流通、职业健康和赔偿以及管理核系统的全球机构和条约都有深远的影响。该项目还有助于了解后殖民非洲的全球地位。它显示了一个声称拥有全球视野的行业如何在经济、技术和政治上依赖于来自非洲特定地区的商品，并认为这些地区的特殊性很重要。它探讨了一些非洲人--从国家元首到矿工--如何利用核技术政治在国际舞台上提出主张。非洲人不仅仅是核结构的被动对象，即使在政治和社会不平等严重限制了他们采取行动的可能性时也是如此。

This project, supported by the NSF Program in Science, Technology & Society, explores the history of African uranium production and its crucial role in shaping conceptions, meanings, and uses of nuclear things in both global and local arenas. In any given year during the last six decades, African ore has supplied 25-50% of the Western world's uranium. This project traces the history of that uranium, focusing on Congo, Gabon, Namibia, Niger, Madagascar, and South Africa. Drawing upon extensive archival research and fieldwork on three continents, the project examines the history of ore production in these sites, and the movement of yellowcake (processed ore) from these mines to destinations in the US, Europe, and Japan. It examines how African uranium mines became nuclear places, the role of African ore in shaping the transnational uranium market, and the culture and practice of work in uranium mines (including issues surrounding radon monitoring and occupational health).This project aims to reshape scholarly perspectives on the "nuclear age" and to suggest new ways of understanding transnational technological networks. It is the first to examine uranium production in Africa, using African sources. Empirically, developing this understanding matters not only because African ore production has accounted for so much of the worldwide uranium trade historically, but also because the continent is currently experiencing its largest uranium boom yet. Conceptually, placing African uranium at the center of nuclear history reveals how the scientific, technological, political, or occupational designation of a material or activity as "nuclear" was often a matter of contention. The stakes of that designation were high, and remain so, with profound consequences for the legal and illegal circulation of uranium and other radioactive materials, for occupational health and compensation, and for the global institutions and treaties governing nuclear systems. This project also contributes to understanding the global place of postcolonial Africa. It shows how an industry with claims to global purview has depended economically, technologically, and politically upon a commodity from particular places in Africa, arguing that the specificity of those places matters. It explores how some Africans--from heads of state to mineworkers--used the technopolitics of nuclear things to make claims in international arenas. Africans were not merely passive subjects of nuclear structures, even when political and social inequalities severely constrained their possibilities for action.