A cosmogram for nuclear things

ISIS

Volumn 98, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 100-108

  Hecht, Gabrielle ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34249328101     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/512834     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. This is an entirely unoriginal observation. See Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy, and the Postcolonial State (London: Zed, 1998);
2. and Abraham, "The Ambivalence of Nuclear Histories," in Global Power Knowledge: Science, Technology, and International Affairs, ed. John Krige and Kai-Henrik Barth, Osiris, 2006, 21:49-65.
3. Both the number of warheads and the question come from the July/Aug. 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the atomic Scientists, p. 66 and cover, respectively.
4. Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" Daedalus, 1980, 109:121-136;
5. and Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, curators, "Making Things Public," exhibit at ZKM Karlsruhe, 2005 (see also Latour and Weibel, eds., Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005]).
6. I develop this argument more fully in Gabrielle Hecht, "Nuclear Ontologies," Constellations, 2006,13:470-481.
7. Office of Technology Assessment, Nuclear Safeguards and the International Atomic Energy Agency, OTA-ISS-615, Apr. 1995, App. B.
8. John Tresch, "Cosmogram" [interview with Jean-Christophe Royoux], in Cosmograms, ed. Melik Ohanian and Jean-Christophe Royoux (New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2005), pp. 67-76.
9. "The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons" (signed at Washington, London, and Moscow, 1 July 1968), Article 4 (emphasis added). For the full text of the treaty and the U.S. State Department's triumphalist version of its history see http://www.state.gov/t/np/trty/16281.htm.
10. I argue this more fully in Hecht, "Nuclear Ontologies" (cit. n. 4);
11. and Gabrielle Hecht, "Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the Making of the IAEA," in Global Power Knowledge, ed. Krige and Barth (cit. n. 1), pp. 25-48.
12. See also Tresch, "Cosmogram" (cit. n. 6).
13. Given the historical slippage between military and civilian nuclear programs in most declared atomic weapons states, this promise had never been terribly convincing. For France see Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998).
14. Quoted in Elaine Sciolino, and William J. Broad, "At the Heart of the United Front on Iran, Vagueness on Crucial Terms," New York Times, 18 June 2006, p. 8.
15. "International Atomic Energy Agency," Annex to South Africa minute no. 79/2, 28 July 1956, pp. 5-6, National Archives of South Africa, BLO 349 ref. PS 17/109/3, Vol. 2.
16. Article 20 of the IAEA statute specified the following definitions: 1. The term "special fissionable material" means plutonium-239; uranium-233; uranium enriched in the isotope 235 or 233; any material containing one or more of the foregoing; and such other fissionable material as the Board of Governors shall from time to time determine; but the term "special fissionable material" does not include source material. 2. The term "uranium enriched in the isotope 235 or 233" means uranium containing the isotopes 235 or 233 or both in an amount such that the abundance ratio of the sum of these isotopes to the isotope 238 is greater than the ratio of the isotope 235 to the isotope 238 occurring in nature. 3. The term "source material" means uranium containing the mixture of isotopes occurring in nature; uranium depleted in the isotope 235; thorium; any of the foregoing in the form of metal, alloy, chemical compound, or concentrate; any other material containing one ore more of the foregoing in such concentration as the Board of Governors shall from time to time determine; and such other material as the Board of Governors shall from time to time determine.
17. See David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: IAEA, 1997), App. 1, pp. 490-491.
18. IAEA, INFCIRC/153 (corrected), June 1972. Article 112 reads: " Nuclear material means any source or any special fissionable material as defined in Article XX of the Statute. The term source material shall not be interpreted as applying to ore or ore residue." Regarding South Africa's seat on the IAEA governing board see Hecht, "Nuclear Ontologies" (cit. n. 4).
19. For a summary of these measures see the IAEA's fact sheet: "IAEA Safeguards Overview: Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements and Additional Protocols," http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Factsheets/English/ sg_overview.html (last accessed 29 June 2006).
20. See also Tresch, "Cosmogram" (cit. n. 6).
21. As of May 2006, 107 nations had signed the Additional Protocol; 75 of these put the guidelines into force.
22. Named after its chairman, Claude Zangger, the committee was initially composed of members from fifteen states that were "suppliers or potential suppliers of nuclear material and equipment": IAEA, INFCIRC/ 209/Rev. 1, Annex.
23. IAEA, INFCIRC/209,3 Sept. 1974.
24. Notably, two trigger lists developed in parallel: one under the rubric of INFCIRC/209, another under the rubric of INFCIRC/254. Different nations adhered to different lists; the two streams were brought into synch in 1977 but continue to develop separately to this day.
25. IAEA, INFCIRC/209/Rev. 1/Mod. 4, 26 Apr. 1999.
26. Gabrielle Hecht, "Rupture-Talk in the Nuclear Age: Conjugating Colonial Power in Africa," Social Studies of Science, Oct.-Dec. 2002, 32(5-6):691-728.
27. This battle is extensively documented in archival material from the South African Chamber of Mines and the Council for Nuclear Safety.