The Shinkolobwe Uranium Mines in the DRC: Nuclear Weapons, Human Health and the Environment

Youth from the Shujaa-initiative in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) joined the

Stop Nuclear Weapons: Peace is in our Hands action on Nuclear Abolition Day to

support the call for a nuclear-weapon-free world.

They also used the occasion to highlight the negative impacts of uranium mining in DRC, in particular from the Shinkolobwe mine which has provided uranium for United States nuclear weapons, while contaminating the environment and causing adverse impacts on the health of people in the region. (See Shujaa-initiative press release for Nuclear Abolition Day, September 26, 2025)

The Shinkolobwe mine – named after a kind of boiled apple that would leave a burn if squeezed – was the source for nearly all of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project, which constructed the ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’ atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility reports that “While colonizers like the U.S. benefited from the Shinkolobwe mine’s uniquely high quality uranium to build atomic bombs, the workers were exploited, while the land and the ‘natives’ experienced devastating health and ecological impacts.” 

But the story of the mine didn’t end with these bombs. According to Susan Williams, a historian at the UK Institute of Commonwealth Studies, DRC’s contribution to the nuclear arms race has shaped the DRC’s ruinous political history and civil wars over the decades that followed. “Even today the mine’s legacy can still be seen in the health of the communities who live near it. It’s an ongoing tragedy,” says Williams, who has examined the role of Shinkolobwe in her book Spies in the Congo (See The forgotten mine that built the atomic bomb, BBC, August 4, 2020)

“Uranium mining generates radioactive pollution with alarming consequences that permanently contaminate not only humans but also our common home, Mother Earth” says Seth Tsongo from the Shujaa Initiative. “Radioactive waste, often managed in unacceptable conditions, pollutes our soil, water, and atmosphere, compromising the health of present and future generations.”

The Shujaa Initiative reports that since 2004, mining in Shinkolobwe has been prohibited (under Decree No. 04/17 of January 27, 2004). However, this law is not adequately enforced, and there continues to be clandestine mining – not of uranium but of other precious metals such as copper, cobalt and zinc.

According to Remy Zahiga, a young Congolese climate and social justice activist, this results in continued pollution of the Panda River, which runs through the Shinkolobwe mine. In addition, Zahiga reports that there is very little support for the local populations who continue to suffer from the long-term, intergenerational health impacts from radioactive elements and heavy metals released from previous mining. (See Uranium, cobalt, copper: The painful legacy of the Shinkolobwe mines in the DRC, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, October 9, 2023).

Zahiga notes that the DRC is a party to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which requires treaty parties to provide assistance to the victims of the whole nuclear fuel cycle, including uranium mining, but that DRC is failing to live up to this obligation.  

The Shujaa Initiative therefore used the occasion of Nuclear Abolition Day to, not only call for global nuclear disarmament, but also to call for:

• The securing of mining sites containing materials used in the manufacture of nuclear bombs; 

• A total ban on the exploitation of raw materials, both Congolese and worldwide, used in the manufacture of nuclear bombs.