This chapter examines the main features of the centralised approach in general terms before turning to its clearest illustration, the international law of nuclear energy. The examination of the latter follows two main steps. Firstly, the chapter discusses the ‘dual use’ of nuclear technology, for civil and military purposes, as main historical driver for centralisation. Secondly, it analyses the structure and content of the centralised governance of nuclear energy, paying particular attention to the role of the IAEA. The international law of nuclear energy is presented by reference to the legal balance between nuclear cooperation and safeguards, safety standards (prevention, response and reparation) and environmental protection.

This chapter traces India’s status concerns from independence in 1947 leading up to the advent of the NPT in the late 1960s. It examines India’s approach to nuclear weapons during this period and derives expectations for how India would react to an international treaty such as the NPT from two competing perspectives: material interests and IST. It tests these hypotheses through a detailed account, based on primary sources, of India’s approach to nuclear proliferation and positions taken in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) negotiations of 1954–1956 and in the Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament from1962 to 1969. It finds that although India faced a major nuclear threat from China, India supported nonproliferation and universal nuclear disarmament, so long as the international nuclear negotiations allowed symbolic equality with the great powers and the door to joining the nuclear club remained open. When the superpowers drafted an NPT that effectively froze the number of recognized nuclear powers for the next 25 years, Indian perceptions of the openness and fairness of the international order changed, leading India to reject the NPT and undertake the very costly and risky step of testing a nuclear weapon.

Nothing about developing and implementing a treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons is easy. While supporters of the TPNW undoubtedly claim a victory in its coming into being, its opponents note its shortcomings warning of the adverse and dire consequences. The degree to which such concerns will materialize remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the adoption of the TPNW has marked the beginning of a new schism in the international community. The word schism is appropriate in this context, loosely defined as “a split or division between strongly opposed sections or parties, caused by differences in opinion or belief.”

This chapter shows how Ghanaian scientists tapped resources from different countries in their quest for a nuclear reactor, from the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, to Canada, the United Arab Republic, India, and China. While many people living near Ghana’s Atomic Energy Commission believe the site has hosted a reactor since around 1966, it actually took several more decades to install the first low power research reactor, the GHARR-1, at Kwabenya. Nkrumah’s bid to obtain a reactor provoked the wrath of France, the United States, and the United Kingdom, all of whom backed the coup d’état against him. It then considers how subsequent governments tried to rekindle the Soviet nuclear reactor initiative and explored other possible reactors from Western powers, but finally settled on a Chinese offer. The chapter relies on a variety of sources including GAEC records, British spy reports, and correspondence between Nkrumah and Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. The chapter provides critical insights, including difficulties the Ghanaian government had in maintaining payments to the Soviets, problems with the storage of the unfinished reactor components while post-Nkrumah regimes mothballed the nuclear program, and several subsequent contracts for reactors that fell apart due to political instability.

The introduction begins with Ghana’s president Kwame Nkrumah (1957-1966) laying the foundation stone of the first reactor building at the new Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in Kwabenya. He promoted “scientific equity” and access to science for all citizens. The nuclear energy project, headed by the engineering professor R.P. Baffour, topped Nkrumah’s plans for scientific development. Nkrumah sent Baffour to the Soviet Union to negotiate with Prime Minister Khrushchev to see what resources Ghana might provide in exchange for technical assistance and a reactor. Nkrumah and his closest advisors asserted a new African vision for nuclear power, predicated on the idea that all countries had citizens with equal intellectual capabilities. Nkrumah expressed, “no country has monopoly of ability.” Ghana was among several independent African nations interested in nuclear energy and the peaceful uses of the atom including Tanzania, Libya, and Nigeria. Julius Nyere and Kenya’s Ali Mazuri stressed that Africans would be more capable of managing nuclear energy than Europeans. The introduction interrogates this assertion through a discussion of scientific equity, manpower and human capacity, and urban dynamics at Atomic Junction. It locates Ghana’s story within scholarship on the rise of nuclear power elsewhere, especially in India and South Africa.

This chapter considers how did Ghanaian physicists made nuclear science their own under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency within what I term a “nuclear protectorate?” During the long battle to secure a nuclear reactor for the Ghana, GAEC sustained one of its additional roles as outlined in the initial 1963 Act 204 that had established it: monitoring radiation at the nation’s x-ray facilities. This work gave GAEC a mandate to apply physics to human bodies. Hospitals and ports turned on radiation sources and GAEC scientists monitored them to measure the levels of exposure to radiographers. Nuclear physicists also introduced new ways to irradiate insects to sterilize pesky disease-carrying flies and kill insect eggs on crops to prolong shelf live. While it took a long time to expand their research programs with an actual reactor, GAEC scientists managed to flourish in their continued quest to make physics relevant to Ghanaian life. The IAEA came to depend on Ghanaian experts as some of the most highly trained nuclear scientists in Africa. They were constantly in demand to represent the continent in IAEA committees, training programs, and observational teams.