Seventy years in the past, on December 8 1953, US president Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered a speech to the United Nations common meeting, setting out his considerations about “atomic warfare”.
Within the speech, later often called Atoms for Peace, he outlined a plan for brand spanking new types of worldwide cooperation round nuclear expertise, calling for “lasting peace for all nations, and happiness and well-being for all males”.
In 2023, nuclear expertise has been very a lot within the headlines, from the potential of nuclear threats through the conflict in Ukraine to cinematically capturing the historical past behind the primary atomic bomb in Oppenheimer.
The speech is essentially forgotten but it surely essentially formed the nuclear world we dwell in at the moment, and stays extremely related to how decision-makers have interaction with such cross-border developments as generative AI. For all their variations, once they had been created each nuclear reactors and AI represented newly rising applied sciences that “spurred a world race for dominance”, essentially difficult current techniques and with potential for each peaceable and army makes use of.
Why the speech occurred
In 1953, eight years after the second world conflict, an armistice concluded the Korean Battle (1950-1953) however the wider chilly conflict was characterised by an accelerating nuclear arms race. US nuclear expertise was beneath tight management, proscribing any exports, even to wartime allies.
Nuclear reactors primarily created gas for warheads. The first energy vegetation and first nuclear submarines had been solely simply being constructed.
Eisenhower’s speech, and the US Atoms for Peace programme that adopted, utterly modified this, proposing a sharing of expertise and nuclear materials with completely different international locations. There was broad dissemination of Eisenhower’s phrases past the UN.
A whole lot of hundreds of pamphlets of the speech had been despatched out, printed in ten languages. US and international media had been inundated with data and promoting.
Public unfold of concepts
One of many speech’s public legacies was encouraging wider public engagement with the concept of what “nuclear” really was. This impressed new in style tradition and academic supplies selling concepts of atomic-powered futures, reminiscent of the long-lasting Walt Disney 1956 science guide and TV programme Our Good friend the Atom.
Eisenhower’s speech referred to as for a UN-based Worldwide Atomic Power Company (IAEA), finally based in 1957, selling peaceable nuclear use whereas discouraging weapons proliferation. It stays a vital worldwide entity in nuclear verification, nuclear security, and promotion of peaceable makes use of of nuclear expertise, most just lately by way of actions reminiscent of monitoring the security of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant through the Ukraine conflict.
Paradoxically, nevertheless, Atoms for Peace additionally had reverse results. The reactors and technical experience, provided for civilian vitality or analysis, supplied essential foundations for proliferation.
The instruments and information had been repurposed by some international locations to develop their very own nuclear weapons, together with, within the first occasion, India and Pakistan. Israel is broadly believed to have benefited, though it continues to disclaim it has nuclear weapons.
One of many speech’s most seen impacts was in signalling, each to home and worldwide audiences, a major change in US coverage in the direction of supplying different nations with nuclear science.
It paved the way in which for the restrictive US Atomic Power Act to be revised the next yr, to permit sharing of expertise and constructing of reactors in several international locations. This considerably elevated international growth of nuclear energy and nuclear analysis in areas from agriculture to drugs.
Nonetheless, it’s value remembering that Atoms for Peace happened in parallel with a wider US chilly conflict technique of pursuing nuclear superiority. Simply over a month earlier than his UN speech, Eisenhower accredited a major enlargement in America’s nuclear arsenal.
Warhead numbers elevated from round 1,100 to greater than 18,000 throughout his presidency. He additionally thought-about the potential use of nuclear weapons in standard conflicts.
Peaceable shared plans
Eisenhower additionally tried to arrange a world uranium financial institution, with US and Soviet joint contributions from their stockpiles of “regular uranium and fissionable supplies”. These could be contributed to a pool, shared with different international locations for peaceable functions, each to assist limit the arms race and “present considerable electrical vitality within the power-starved areas of the world”.
Nonetheless, this financial institution was by no means created, partly due to Soviet considerations that it will proceed to permit US management of nuclear weapons expertise. As a substitute, bilateral agreements had been struck to provide nuclear vitality and supplies.
Sadly, spreading “peaceable” expertise, supplying nuclear reactors and materials for vitality and civil analysis, grew to become a chilly conflict and business “weapon”, aiming to tie uranium and expertise exports to fulfilling situations or continued dependence on the promoting international locations to provide gas.
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Satirically, this echoed one US concern which had helped inspire Atoms for Peace: the prospect of the Soviet Union sharing nuclear vitality as a method of influencing different international locations and creating alliances.
These developments are explicit related at the moment. Russian assaults on Ukraine’s nuclear energy vegetation through the present conflict have obtained a lot consideration, however what’s much less well-known is Russia’s nuclear vitality empire, with contracts and building spanning 54 international locations.
This has remained “largely beneath the sanctions radar”, whereas remaining a major supply of worldwide affect for Russia.
Nuclear’s attain at the moment
As of November 2023, roughly 10% of the world’s vitality was provided from greater than 400 nuclear reactors, whereas 40 million nuclear medical procedures are carried out annually, utilizing radioactive supplies to diagnose or deal with completely different illnesses.
In 2023, policymakers proceed grappling with associated nuclear points, whether or not proposals for brand spanking new small modular nuclear reactors, nuclear energy in house, debates round potential for nuclear energy in addressing local weather change or fears of new nuclear arms races.
Confronted with such challenges, Eisenhower’s phrases: “If a hazard exists on this planet, it’s a hazard shared by all; and equally, that if hope exists within the thoughts of 1 nation, that hope needs to be shared by all” appear as related at the moment, as they did in 1953.
