DANGEROUS ELEMENT: The uranium for the original atomic bombs came from a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Shinkolobwe.
Image: ©ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/DAVID FREUND
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Overview
Three Mile Island and Nuclear Power
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Tom Zoellner's book Uranium.
One of the most potentially dangerous places in the world is called Shinkolobwe, the name of a now-destroyed village in central Africa which took its name from a thorny fruit resembling an apple. After boiling, the outside of the fruit cools quickly but the inside is like a sponge. It retains hot water for a long time. Squeezing it results in a burn.
The word is also local slang for a man who is easygoing on the surface but becomes angry when provoked.
A local story around Shinkolobwe says that a deep pit near the remnants of the village is haunted by a spirit named “Madame Kipese,” who lives inside the pit. The Madame had been a lively and forceful woman when she was alive, but had grown evil after her death and burial. White men had come here many years ago to dig the hole and had become friendly with her. They may have even had sex with her.
Madame Kipese needs to consume human souls to keep herself strong. She emerges from time to time to kill someone. Unexplained deaths in the area are sometimes attributed to Madame Kipese.
“I would not go there myself,” an officer from the federal police told me. He was on the protection staff of Joseph Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“It’s a very dangerous place,” he went on. “Cell phones burn out when you take them there. Television sets won’t work, even if there were a place to plug them in. Be sure you don’t wear a T-shirt. You must wear a long-sleeve shirt to protect yourself from the dust. All the men who work there are supposed to wear long-sleeve shirts. Try not to breathe the dust. Whatever you do, don’t put any of that stuff in your pocket.
“Are you sure you want to go?”
I told him I was sure.
“You have to cross through at least four roadblocks before you get there,” he said. “Each one is more serious. That place is very heavily guarded. It is considered a strategic site. They want to make sure you are not a saboteur. The last line of defense is a squad of United Nations soldiers. I won’t be able to help you with them.”
I wound up paying him $80 for what he described as a special police authorization.
The next day, I received a photocopy with the Presidential letterhead upon it. Below it, in blue ballpoint scrawl, was my name, my passport number, my birthday and a series of villages I was to pass through on my way.
Shinkolobwe is now considered an official nonplace. The provincial governor had ordered a squad of soldiers to evacuate the village and burn down all the huts in 2004, leaving nothing behind but stumps and garbage. A detachment of Army personnel was left behind to guard the edges and make sure nobody entered.
The government had been embarrassed by a series of accidental deaths inside the mine. Some men were digging inside a jerry-built tunnel when it collapsed on them. Eight were killed, and thirteen injured.
Fatal accidents are all too common in the illegal mining trade of the Congo. Abandoned mines like this one are scattered all over the southern savanna and most of them are still being picked over by local farmers hoping to boost their income by selling a few bags of minerals on the side, usually copper and a smattering of cobalt. Shinkolobwe was different. This was the pit which, in the 1940s, had yielded most of the uranium for the atomic bombs the United States had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But it was more than historical curiosity. The pit had been closed and the mineshafts sealed tight with concrete plugs when Congo became an independent nation more than four decades ago, yet local miners had been sneaking into the pit to dig out its radioactive contents and sell them on the black market. The birthplace of the atomic bomb is still bleeding uranium and nobody is certain where it might be going.
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20 Comments
Add CommentThis is a great story! Thanks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuklear energie, Nein Danke
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisvery good informative article
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery interesting. Maybe it's in the book, but I was waiting to read about the actual radiation levels in and around the cave. I'm sure he didn't go there without a geigercounter...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We were there for several minutes before I realized that I still had the letter of authorization from the police official in my backpack. I hadnt needed to withdraw it because we hadnt encountered a single roadblock. Nobody was guarding Shinkolobwe. We had walked right in."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTranslation: I was conned by a corrupt cop.
Very interesting exerpt. I was already intrigued by the book before reading this, now I know I really want to read this book.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSooo...Does that mean i can buy Uranium on Craigslist lol? Obviously just being facetious but somebody malicious might be doing that this very minute!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess you can... @ http://www.unitednuclear.com/ It looks like it's not a joke but that they actually do business.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is the science?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAh..the safest energy source on the planet!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt what point does the intenational community say "this resource is unable to be managed by the corrupt and greedy legacy of the Belgian colonialists and their spawn now in charge (the greed just comes with the poverty of spirit so equally abundant in human nature) and so the UN will oust the current regime and return to them a country where certain activities will not be administerd by the soveriegn itself but by international oversight." The sooner the better. As instabilities in national security arises, it will become a more and more unavoidable measure...and who knows, maybe it will result in a future Congo that is not all screwed up by its collective ignorance and obsession with personal power.
The book should be required reading for everyone in the world. Another fine example of destruction from beneath the ground on up. Seems not one major country has had radio-active free hands. And it seems the Chinese are Africa's favorite client or is that baron these days? They are wood pulping their arses off there now, destroying forests. What's next? I see them importing Chinese people by the province.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdoug 1 said "At what point does the inte[r]national community say ""this resource is unable to be managed by the corrupt and greedy legacy of the Belgian colonialists and their spawn now in charge (the greed just comes with the poverty of spirit so equally abundant in human nature) and so the UN will oust the current regime and return to them a country where certain activities will not be administerd by the soveriegn itself but by international oversight.""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to say this is unlikely, that the UN could, possibly, make a moral resolution condemning what's going on there and that the regime is not going to be removed, but will never act on it, and then at some point the US could sign this into law, but not act on it, and then when a president finally does he'll be blamed for not consulting the world and UN which condemns the intervention they themselves helped draft resolutions upon, and which his predecessor signed into law.
doug 1 said "At what point does the inte[r]national community say ""this resource is unable to be managed by the corrupt and greedy legacy of the Belgian colonialists and their spawn now in charge (the greed just comes with the poverty of spirit so equally abundant in human nature) and so the UN will oust the current regime and return to them a country where certain activities will not be administerd by the soveriegn itself but by international oversight.""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to say this is unlikely, that the UN could, possibly, make a moral resolution condemning what's going on there and that the regime is not going to be removed, but will never act on it, and then at some point the US could sign this into law, but not act on it, and then when a president finally does he'll be blamed for not consulting the world and UN which condemns the intervention they themselves helped draft resolutions upon, and which his predecessor signed into law.
The poor planet earth must be silently wailing over the fact it gave birth to the wicked and voracious predator called human beings. This species arrogantly believes itself to be the most intelligent animal, but ironically it is the only life form that has been surreptitiously dragging itself to mass-suicide in not so a distant future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a geologist and a mining company executive, and having worked for the past 9 years in the African mining business, I can tell you that Zoellner is factually cahallenged and is also straining, through inuindo, misinterpretation of facts and implications, to fabricate the notion that that there is something sinister and mysterious about mining in the Congo. Abandoned mines are found all aross the world and there is nothing special about them . An abandoned mine is simply an abandoned hole in the ground no matter where it is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSmall scale local miners ("galemsey") work in every mining district in Africa both active and abandoned. If there was uranium worth mining (even at galemse wages) at Shinkolobwe there would have been a large contingent of galemse there. If there was no one working the day of his tour, there is no no uranuim left - period.
Also note that galemse are never going to produce the huge tonnages of ore that are requred to support the develoment of a nation's nuclear weapons program. U235 constitutes less that 1% of the urnium atoms in the ore and the uranium atoms typically constitute less that 1% of the ore, and ore tyically constitutes less than 10 to 20% of the rock that must be moved to get the ore. And since the Shinkolobwe deposit has been mined out and abandoned, the uranium grade is probably extremetly low. A few barrels of low grade ore grabbed by a galemse is never going to pose a threat o anyone, even a truck load of barrels full of uranium ore is a drop in the bucket of what is needed to develope a weapons program.
His tory is simply an romatic account of being swindled by the Congolese while traveling about Africa. No facts nor information otherwise in his story.
Is the author for real, or a sensationalist? I saw him interviewed by John Stewart (who was flippant, as expected) but was surprised at the equally flippant and misleading responses. He looks to me like a quickie biography specialist, not someone with in depth knowledge of the subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFascinating. It is interesting that a Google Earth search does not locate a place with the name Shinkolobwe. Considering the historical and potentially dangerous significance of Shinkolobwe, it is surprising that there is no listing. Is there another geographic name?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid
The mine can clearly be seen on Google Earth at 11 degrees 02 minutes 59.53 seconds North and 26 degrees, 32 minutes and 52.79 seconds East. The imagery is of high quality, which is sort of odd in the middle of nowhere, except of course when there is a uranium mine to watch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfufu
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is disgraceful that mining companies are not made to restore land into a fit condition after abandonning workings. The cost of doing this should be included in the unit cost of nuclear-powered electricity. If this were so, such countries as France would soon think twice about building new reactors...
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