The Bomb: South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Programme
1920188487
9781920188481
Description:
In 1993, South African President F.W. de Klerk announced that six-and-a-half nuclear bombs had been secretly built and destroyed. No other country has ever voluntarily destroyed its nuclear arsenal. In this book, nuclear physicist Nic von Wielligh and his daughter Lydia von Wielligh-Steyn tell the gripping story of the splitting of the atom and the power it realizes. It is an account of groundbreaking research and the scientists responsible; it deals with uranium enrichment, the arms race, and South Afria's secret program. The Bomb: South Africa's Nuclear Weapons Programme is a story of nuclear explosions, espionage, smuggling nuclear materials, and swords that became ploughshares. Professor Waldo Stumpf, the former CEO of the South African Atomic Energy Corporation, called The Bomb, “the only comprehensive work so far on South Africa's part in this historic subject that has been turned into a thoroughly readable story.”