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The bomb : South Africa's nuclear weapons programme / Nic von Wielligh, Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn.
Van Pelt Library U264.5.S6 V6613 2015
Available
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Von Wielligh, Nic, 1936- author.
- Standardized Title:
- Bom. English
- Language:
- Afrikaans
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Nuclear weapons--South Africa--History.
- Nuclear weapons.
- Nuclear disarmament--South Africa--History.
- Nuclear disarmament.
- Nuclear weapons--Government policy--South Africa--History.
- Nuclear weapons--Government policy.
- History.
- South Africa.
- Genre:
- History.
- Physical Description:
- xvii, 550 pages, 16 pages of plates : illustrations (some colour), portraits (some colour) ; 22 cm
- Edition:
- First English edition.
- Place of Publication:
- Pretoria : Litera, 2015.
- Language Note:
- Translated from the Afrikaans by Sandra Mills.
- Summary:
- The Bomb South Africa's Bomb kept the world guessing for years. Six-and-a-half nuclear bombs had been secretly built and destroyed, former South African president F.W. de Klerk announced in 1993. No other country has ever voluntary destroyed its nuclear arsenal. From 1975 Nic von Wielligh was involved in the production of nuclear weapons material, the dismantling of the nuclear weapons and the provision of evidence of South Africa's bona fides to the international community. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared South Africa's Initial Report to be the most comprehensive and professional that they had ever received. In this book the nuclear physicist and his daughter Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn tell the gripping story of the splitting of the atom and the power it releases. It is an account of ground-breaking research and the scientists responsible; it deals with uranium enrichment, the arms race and South Africa's secret programme. The Bomb: South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Programme is a story of nuclear explosions, espionage, smuggling of nuclear materials and swords that became ploughshares. Book jacket.
- Contents:
- Part 1 1
- 25 Centuries From Abdera to Hiroshima 3
- The Atom Has a Story of Its Own ... 3
- Stereotypes 3
- Holy curiosity 3
- A long history 4
- Of apples and planets 5
- Faraday, Maxwell and the Cavendish Laboratory 6
- The Republic of Science 7
- Joseph John Thomson 8
- Ernest Rutherford 8
- Exhilarating decades 11
- After 2 500 years, a workable model of the atom 12
- Things get more complex 13
- Neutron bombardment 14
- A detour to Switzerland 14
- How much more damage? 16
- Neutron bombardment continues 17
- Multiplication 18
- Isotope separation 20
- Bellicose atoms 21
- The spadework 21
- Bat bombs 24
- Behind the scenes in Britain 24
- The necessary spark 26
- From theory to practice 26
- The momentum builds up 29
- Plutonium 32
- Basic nuclear weapons design 33
- Criticality and critical mass 36
- Dilemma 38
- A physics experiment becomes a political cudgel 39
- Did the nuclear bombs force Japan to surrender? 42
- The death throes of the Manhattan Project 44
- A time to reap 45
- What did the Germans achieve? 47
- Soviet moles 48
- The Soviet Union catches up with the USA 51
- Scaling up 53
- "With the bloody Union Jack on top of it..." 56
- Another consequence of the Quebec Agreement 57
- France, the fourth country with the force de frappe 59
- China, the fifth nuclear power 62
- Part 2 65
- Atoms in the Service of Peace (Or How to Tame a Monster) 67
- A very old story 67
- Peaceful applications - a possibility? 69
- "Good" and "bad" electricity 70
- Heir presumptive of a remarkable family; wars and peacekeeping bodies 71
- A delicate balancing act 73
- The general triumphs in the talking shop 74
- How altruistic were Eisenhowers plans? 77
- Birth pangs 79
- Pronouncements at the First Geneva Conference 80
- What are safeguards? 82
- Were the safeguards adequate? 84
- Back to the drawing board: the design of comprehensive safeguards agreements 87
- IAEA inspections 88
- Smiling Buddha, and the cat is set among the pigeons 90
- India's hostile neighbours 90
- Chain reaction of another kind 92
- How do the Zangger Committee and the Nuclear Suppliers Group operate? 93
- International control over the proliferation of nuclear weapons 94
- Part 3 95
- The Bomb in the Bushveld 97
- Early Beginnings 97
- The home-grown product 97
- Ampie Roux 98
- Wally Grant 99
- The father of South Africa's nuclear weapons 100
- Wynand de Villiers brings a souvenir home 101
- "Let's get down to work" 102
- Tragedy on the farm Pelindaba 102
- The heart of Pelindaba 104
- The Safari-1 reactor 106
- A difficult choice 110
- Northern Tyres and Accessories - what the façade concealed 112
- UF₆ and hydrogen 114
- Separative work 116
- Flexing Their Muscles 117
- John Vorster's announcement of 20 July 1970 120
- Isolation and Resourcefulness 123
- Criticism 123
- Wooing the Germans 124
- The Y-plant 126
- Technical aspects 126
- Courage in action 128
- A love-hate relationship 130
- Indian breach of faith affects South Africa 131
- A more aggressive approach 133
- Spied on and Shunned 134
- Progress 134
- Nuclear devices and nuclear weapons 135
- Dirty work in the desert 136
- What the spooks in the USA thought 142
- How did the Soviet Union know where to look? 143
- Another Trojan horse? 146
- Further interference by the Americans 147
- In case of need 149
- Mysterious Incident No. 747 OF 22 September 1979 150
- Plutonium for the crocodiles 150
- Vela 6911 registers a double flash 151
- Double flashes and bhangmeters 152
- Search for the truth 155
- If it was a weapons test, who did the testing? 157
- Vela postscript - a ghost from the past 160
- Jonathan Jay Pollard 161
- Armscor Steps Up 164
- The Kentron Circle facility 166
- The programme makes headway 170
- Nuclear weapons 174
- The Gouriqua project: materials for sophisticated devices 174
- Ad hoc cabinet committee: September 1985 176
- Overview of the most important UNSC resolutions 178
- The RSA missile series 184
- Missiles and South Africa's interest in them 184
- Further reflections on Project Festival 187
- The requirements of the South African Defence Force 189
- Status in September 1987 190
- Elsewhere on the Farm 193
- Koeberg, the Z-plant and Beva 193
- Koeberg nuclear power plant 196
- More "sabotage" - of a kind that casts a long, dark shadow 199
- The Z- and U-plants and Beva 200
- Eskom's PBMR 205
- Part 4 207
- The End of an Era 209
- Butterflies and chaos 209
- The butterfly in the USSR 209
- The new broom 213
- The "Mantel" Project 216
- Nuclear weaponry command and control procedures 218
- The dismantlement process 222
- Chuck Norris to the rescue 223
- The destruction of documentation 224
- Saddam Hussein causes trouble 226
- Unscom and the IAEA's action team 227
- The Additional Protocol 229
- Signing the NPT and the IAEA's Safeguards Agreement 230
- The IAEA: organisation and legal rights 236
- A game with new rules 237
- The corpse with the dagger in its back 240
- In search of the MUF 242
- What is MUF? 242
- Pale faces and furious blushes 245
- Ballpoint pens to the rescue 246
- Deep in the desert 247
- Nuclear forensics 249
- The pressure builds up 251
- The 5000 building complex 255
- A rough neighbourhood - and a surprise announcement 258
- Putting things in perspective 261
- Prelude to 23 March 1993 263
- Resuscitating the CCI 267
- A Russian bomb-maker takes the wheel 269
- The remainder of that chaotic year: 1993 269
- A magical substance 272
- A spectacular affair 275
- An interesting visit 275
- An African bomb? 278
- Jorge Risquet Valdés 281
- Part 5 283
- Cooperation Between Israel and South Africa 285
- The Israeli nuclear programme 285
- Christian convert/successful spy 289
- Strange bedfellows - the Jewish parallel 291
- Operation Tea Leaves 294
- The end of the friendship 299
- Part 6 303
- From Polecat to Model Citizen 305
- A modern Aeolus 305
- Harold Macmillan and the biggest ever Western nuclear disaster 307
- The last decade of the 20th century 309
- South Africa in the non-proliferation arena 311
- Theft and an application for membership of the NSG 314
- South Africa's missile programme and the MTCR 316
- Distress on the other side of the Atlantic 317
- Bankrolling demolition 320
- The big prize - membership of the MTCR 321
- A spectacular debut in New York 322
- The NAM - "a broad church" 323
- A new man on the scene 334
- Interlude in Iraq 337
- An unworthy end to a career 339
- Part 7 341
- A South African Stall in Khan's Atomic Bazaar 343
- The UNSC 343
- Gemot Zippe's legacy 344
- In the land of cheese and windmills 345
- Two Germans and a South African 349
- Friends, butter factories and skulduggery 352
- Espionage and letter bombs 352
- The tide turns against Pakistan 354
- An impending threat and missile systems 355
- India and Israel 355
- The other Khan works behind the scenes 358
- Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests 358
- A party with an agenda 360
- Gaddafi's dream, Khans contract 362
- The nuclear smugglers fall into a snare 364
- The dominoes fall 365
- The second domino 367
- Names mentioned in the Malaysian press release 367
- Arrests in Switzerland, Germany, Turkey and the Netherlands 368
- How did the Americans and the British know about the cargo on board the BBC China? 369
- The Tinners 371
- Paid for but not delivered - the focus shifts 372
- A visit to Tradefin in Vanderbijlpark and further arrests 373
- Fact or fiction? 380
- Meyer provides the nails for the coffin 382
- The case 386
- Lerch's fate 388
- Did A.Q.
- Khan do the unthinkable? 388
- Part 8 391
- A Murky Crystal Ball 393
- Deterrent or miracle? 393
- The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the man who saved the world 399
- The faceless enemy 405
- War can get dirty 408
- The world has changed 410
- "Global (no?) zero" 410
- Nuclear weapons: states that have them and those that want them 412
- Unholy curiosity 419
- International treaties and disarmament 421
- Black swans and nuclear power 423
- The Fukushima disaster 424
- Nuclear energy, green energy and the German experiment 430
- And South Africa? 434.
- Notes:
- Originally published in Afrikaans as Die bom: Suid-Afrika se kernwapenprogram by Litera Publikasies, 2014.
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 451-458) and index.
- ISBN:
- 9781920188481
- 1920188487
- OCLC:
- 930598649
- Publisher Number:
- 99972004017
- Online:
- Book review (H-Net)
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