ARLIT, Niger/PARIS (Reuters) - When France began mining uranium ore in the desert of northern Niger in the early 1970s, Arlit was a cluster of miners' huts stranded between the sun-blasted rocks of the Air mountains and the sands of the Sahara. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo changed that. France embraced nuclear power to free itself from reliance on foreign oil and overnight this remote corner of Africa became crucial to its national interests. Arlit has grown into a sprawling settlement of 117,000...
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