Providing rare insights into the history of South Africa's secretive nuclear industry, this book explains how South Africa turned to the development of a nuclear program and weapons of mass destruction as a result of its abundance of uranium—a byproduct of its gold mines. South Africa's current plans to revitalize its nuclear industry are judged against the background of an international nuclear industry that has not been able to solve basic problems of excessive cost, the threat to human health and safety, and long-term environmental contamination. An illustrated explanation of basic nuclear concepts and the nuclear fuel chain makes the history and arguments easy to follow.

David Fig is an independent researcher on environmental policy matters and chairs the board of Biowatch South Africa, a nongovernmental organization opposing biopiracy and the spread of genetic engineering in agriculture that proposes sustainable food security alternatives.