It was extracted from the Shinkolobwe mine in then Belgian Congo, owned by Union Minière, part of the mother country’s biggest and wealthiest company, Société Générale de Belgique. Without access to that mine, the atom bomb might never have been built by American scientists during the second world war. “The moral authority of the struggle against fascism was not applied to the inequalities and injustice in the Congo,” Williams writes. “The most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo,” Einstein wrote. • Spies in the Congo: the Race for the Ore That Built the Atomic Bomb is published by Hurst.

Source: The Guardian September 17, 2016 07:52 UTC