Misiones seculares: la asistencia técnica nuclear en la primera década del Organismo Internacional de Energía Atómica (1958-1968)

Abstract

| The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Preliminary Assistance Missions, first organized in 1958 from its headquarters in Vienna, retooled practices and activities associated with technical aid and international cooperation in the period before the Second World War. The secularization of colonial missions preserved their focus on fact —finding, diagnosis, advising and ultimately transformation, while acquiring new traits during the decolonization of large portions of the world. Numerous colonial agents now became part of the newly created United Nations’ specialized agencies, bringing with them administrative practices and modes of operation that had been put in place in the previous period. Nevertheless, the new missions required the active participation of so-called recipient countries that took place in a context of manifest new values. The IAEA’s missions carried out a specific task: to be able to create the need for nuclear technologies and knowledge which most countries did not dim priorities, and their dependence on education and training on the new atomic disciplines.