Unmasking the Peaceful Atom

Abstract

The peaceful atom is a thick historical object. Its analysis covers a range of material practices from exploiting radioisotopes for agriculture, medicine, and biomedical research to constructing and operating nuclear power reactors for research and to generate electricity. Although the social benefits of the atom predated WWII, it was the horror of nuclear war, as evidenced in August 1945, that propelled the exploitation of the peaceful atom to the core of the political process. Actively promoted as a benign alternative to atoms for war, the dissemination of the fruits of the peaceful atom, with the cooperation of industry, became entangled with interstate competition, superpower rivalry and the wave of decolonization that began to sweep across the globe in the late 1940s. Its attraction was catalyzed by President Eisenhower’s famous ‘Atoms for Peace’ speech at the United Nations in December 1953. Eisenhower was stung by a rising crescendo of criticism of the U.S. for developing and testing both atomic and hydrogen bombs. In a determined attempt “to convince the world that we are working for peace and not trying to blow them to kingdom come,”1 the President announced that his government would work along with others to make fissionable material available to those who wanted “to apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities” and, most notably, to the provision of “abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world.”2 The enthusiastic response to this suggestion provided the impetus for a revision of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act in 1954 to facilitate the exchange of information with other nations and the commercialization of nuclear energy by private industry. Eisenhower’s speech was the backdrop to two major international conferences on the peaceful uses of atomic energy in Geneva in 1955 and 1958.3 And it led to the establishment of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under UN auspices to promote the exploitation of the peaceful atom and to implement safeguards against a nuclear power program being diverted from civil to military objectives. By the time the decade was out, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission