What does it mean to be a nuclear state? What makes things nuclear? Gabrielle Hecht addresses these questions in an ambitious and well-researched book. She introduces a term—“nuclearity”—to describe the process by which places and objects are classified as nuclear (pp. 3–4). To understand how nuclearity develops and why it matters, Hecht focuses on one particular dimension of the global nuclear order: namely, uranium in Africa.
Is uranium an exceptional “nuclear” commodity or is it an ordinary mineral? It is seemingly hard to argue that uranium is banal, given that it can be used to make nuclear weapons (or to produce fuel for nuclear power plants). Yet African producers sometimes act as though there is nothing special about uranium. On top of this, other countries—including the United States—assume that Gabon and Niger do not have any “nuclear activities” (p. 13). To be sure, these countries do not operate nuclear power plants, but they are uranium exporters. Why does that not make them “nuclear”?
This discussion leads to the first of two main arguments advanced in Being Nuclear: Nuclearity is “a contested technopolitical category” (p. 14). Bombs and radiation have obvious physical properties—nuclear weapons can destroy civilization because they are so destructive, for instance—but these characteristics do not determine nuclearity on their own. Uranium, Hecht argues, is not automatically classified as a nuclear material with special significance. Rather, uranium emerges as “exceptional” only if states, firms, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, and other relevant actors work to designate it as such. In her words, nuclearity “emerges from political and cultural configurations of technical and scientific things, from the social relations where knowledge is produced” (p. 15). Thus, nuclearity can vary both between countries and across time.
Hecht's second argument deals with the effects of nuclearity. She aims “to show the consequences of rendering [nuclear] things exceptional or dismissing them as banal” (p. 15). How states and other actors designate uranium, she posits, is not a trivial thing; it matters in the real world.
To develop and illustrate these arguments, the author focuses on two main aspects of the African uranium trade. Part I of the book addresses the political economy of uranium. It emphasizes, in particular, the emergence of the uranium market. She argues that various actors—including brokerage firms, economists, and international institutions—sought to reinvent uranium as an ordinary commodity in order to facilitate its exchange in open markets. These actors created “market devices” to make uranium seem like just another commodity, such as copper or gold.
At the same time, however, others worked to promote a different narrative. Leaders in African states sometimes had incentives to make uranium seem exceptional in order to maximize its value. For example, Hamani Diori, the president of Niger from 1960 to 1974, played up the uniqueness of uranium in an attempt to increase its price (p. 125).
Part II focuses on the public health effects of Africa's uranium mines. Workers in these mines faced the risk of radiation exposure—but this danger was not always made clear. Why? How were the dangers of radiation exposure reported, and to whom? Did workers in uranium mines understand the risks that they faced?
Attaching nuclear status to uranium mines, according to Hecht, requires work. “The nuclearity of uranium ore,” she argues “didn't automatically make uranium mining a nuclear activity” (p. 220). Firms tried to ignore or downplay the nuclearity of uranium mines in order to avoid additional regulatory burdens that could threaten their bottom lines. Locals often lacked the scientific knowledge necessary to challenge prevailing industry views, and, in any case, it is difficult to establish a causal connection between radon exposure (uranium atoms decay into radon) and cancer. As a result, as indicated by the title of Chapter 6, many uranium miners in Africa have “a history of invisibility.”
Yet workers were not always fully invisible. Hecht documents variation among African countries in the degree to which workers understood (and were protected from) the radiation risks of uranium mining. In Madagascar, workers lacked access to the scientific data necessary to understand the risks they faced. Their work, then, failed to achieve nuclearity. Many South African mine workers did not even realize that they were working with uranium (because uranium can be coproduced with gold). On the other hand, in Gabon, there were denser knowledge networks that enabled workers to understand radiation hazards and eventually seek compensation from companies they perceived as negligent.
There is much to like about this book, and scholars from many disciplines can learn a great deal from Being Nuclear. The historical narratives, which are based on fieldwork in several African countries, are impressive and informative. Very few scholars before Hecht have devoted such thorough attention to the nuclear histories of African countries—especially relative to the extensive treatment afforded to other states' nuclear programs.
One particularly salient take-home point comes from the book's last sentence: “The power of nuclear things has a price” (p. 339). Hecht convincingly shows that nuclear programs have important, albeit underappreciated, human costs—particularly for workers in uranium mines. In doing so, she forces scholars to rethink how they evaluate the price tags on nuclear programs.
Yet the book also has some limitations. Hecht shows that nuclearity varies across space and time, but she does not persuasively explain this variation. Why is uranium a “nuclear commodity” in some African countries but not in others? She argues at various points that the answer has to do with history, geography, knowledge production, postcolonial politics, and transnational activism, among other things (e.g., pp. 14, 249). These factors seem to matter in the cases discussed, but the author does not develop a theory at the outset to tell readers precisely how and why they affect the nuclearity of uranium. Doing so would have strengthened her argument but, to be fair, this may not have been one of her principal objectives.
Hecht is a historian, and her primary audience, presumably, is other historians. Political scientists may find certain aspects of the book disappointing. Her arguments clearly have a constructivist flavor. Yet she does not discuss the rich theoretical literature from the constructivist tradition in political science. It seems particularly odd, from the perspective of a political scientist, that Hecht did not engage ideas advanced by Richard Price and Nina Tannenwald. These scholars have argued that the value of chemical and nuclear weapons comes partially from their social properties—not just their physical ones. Hecht usefully extends this argument in the context of uranium, but she does not explicitly link her ideas to existing international relations theories. This is a missed opportunity, but perhaps future research—from Hecht or other scholars—can take up this task.
Overall, despite its limitations, Being Nuclear is an interesting book. Given its scope and aims, it will naturally have a bigger impact in history than in political science. Yet political scientists interested in the political economy of the nuclear marketplace and the nuclear history of Africa have much to gain from reading it.
