Chapter 4 traces how South Africa’s position on the NPT evolved during the transition from P. W. Botha to F. W. de Klerk. My concentrated attention here lies on the role played by the South African DFA because the department’s officials were intimately involved in setting up these multilateral talks and, more crucially, were at the forefront of advocating the South African strategy on the NPT internationally. The ensuing discussion reconstructs events chronologically, bringing together the views of the South African, British, American and Soviet officials who dealt with the issue.

Chapter 6 bridges the gap between the apartheid years and the post-apartheid majority government under ANC rule. Following the signature of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the saga of South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme was far from over, as the government still had to conclude a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). I illuminate how the nuclear sector inherited from the apartheid era was scaled down under the first democratic government. In addition, yet another leftover from the apartheid past continued to make headlines well into the second decade of the new millennium: the highly enriched uranium (HEU) in the hands of the South Africans remained an irritating issue from an US non-proliferation policy point of view. By looking at the government’s nuclear policies under ANC majority rule, I reveal that the Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma administrations were not receptive to US incentives to sell South Africa’s remaining HEU to Washington. However, from the US State Department’s perspective, this could have decreased the danger of proliferation.

Section K first provides an overview of bilateral treaties between the United States and the Russian Federation/former USSR, with New START being the only agreement remaining in force. The Section then addresses multilateral treaties and arrangements. After a brief assessment of the NPT and related instruments, it provides an in-depth analysis of the TPNW. Finally, the Section addresses UN Security Council Resolution 1540 and specific UN Security Council resolutions concerning the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Iran.

We argue in Chapter 4 that states often seek to reveal intelligence about other states’ violations of international rules and laws but are deterred by concerns about revealing the sources and methods used to collect that intelligence. Properly equipped nuclear international organizations can mitigate these dilemmas, however, by analyzing and acting on sensitive information while protecting it from wide dissemination. Using new data on intelligence disclosures to the International Atomic Energy Agency and analysis of the full universe of nuclear proliferation cases, we demonstrate that strengthening the agency’s intelligence protection capabilities led to greater intelligence sharing and fewer suspected nuclear facilities. However, our theory suggests that this solution gives informed states a subtle form of influence and is in tension with the normative goal of international transparency.

The introduction begins with Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah (1957-1966) laying the foundation stone of the first reactor building at the new Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in Kwabenya. He promoted “scientific equity” and access to science for all citizens. The nuclear energy project, headed by the engineering professor R.P. Baffour, topped Nkrumah’s plans for scientific development. Nkrumah sent Baffour to the Soviet Union to negotiate with Prime Minister Khrushchev to see what resources Ghana might provide in exchange for technical assistance and a reactor. Nkrumah and his closest advisors asserted a new African vision for nuclear power, predicated on the idea that all countries had citizens with equal intellectual capabilities. Nkrumah expressed, “no country has monopoly of ability.” Ghana was among several independent African nations interested in nuclear energy and the peaceful uses of the atom including Tanzania, Libya, and Nigeria. Julius Nyere and Kenya’s Ali Mazuri stressed that Africans would be more capable of managing nuclear energy than Europeans. The introduction interrogates this assertion through a discussion of scientific equity, manpower and human capacity, and urban dynamics at Atomic Junction. It locates Ghana’s story within scholarship on the rise of nuclear power elsewhere, especially in India and South Africa.

This chapter considers how did Ghanaian physicists made nuclear science their own under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency within what I term a “nuclear protectorate?” During the long battle to secure a nuclear reactor for the Ghana, GAEC sustained one of its additional roles as outlined in the initial 1963 Act 204 that had established it: monitoring radiation at the nation’s x-ray facilities. This work gave GAEC a mandate to apply physics to human bodies. Hospitals and ports turned on radiation sources and GAEC scientists monitored them to measure the levels of exposure to radiographers. Nuclear physicists also introduced new ways to irradiate insects to sterilize pesky disease-carrying flies and kill insect eggs on crops to prolong shelf live. While it took a long time to expand their research programs with an actual reactor, GAEC scientists managed to flourish in their continued quest to make physics relevant to Ghanaian life. The IAEA came to depend on Ghanaian experts as some of the most highly trained nuclear scientists in Africa. They were constantly in demand to represent the continent in IAEA committees, training programs, and observational teams.