Atoms for Peace

To address the technology, waste, safety and security issues concerning nuclear energy, the UN established the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957, a few years after U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower s famous Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations General Assembly. 

Landsdowne, VA Eno Transportation Foundation, Inc. Hewlett, R. G., and Anderson, O. E., Jr. (1991). History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, Vol. 1 1939-1946. Berkeley, University of California Press. Hewlett, R. G., and Duncan, F. (1991). Atomic Shield, Vol. 2 1947—1952. Berkeley University of California Press. Hewlett, R. G., and Holl, J. (1991). Atoms for Peace and War Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission, Vol. 3 1953-1961. Berkeley University of California Press. Eandy, M. K. Roberts, IM. J. Thomas, S. R. and Eansy, M. K. (1994). The Environmental Protection Agency Asking the Wrong Questions From Nixon to Clinton. New York Oxford University Press. 

ATOMS FOR PEACE" THE ORIGINS OF THE NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY... 

The ultimate disposition of HLW or SNF is a matter of significant importance and is controversial for some. In the United States all FILW, including SNF, has always been a federal responsibility, beginning with the Atoms for Peace Program in the 1950s. A... 

Smog identified for the first time in Los Angeles, California, from the combination of a large number of automobiles, bright sunlight, and frequently stagnant air. December 8. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower delivers his Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations. 

Hewlett, R.G. and Holl, J.M., Atoms for Peace and War, 1953-1961 Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1989. 

Georg von Hevesy. Hungarian chemist who, with Dr. Dirk Coster of the University of Groningen, discovered the element hafnium in zirconium ores and made a thorough study of its properties. Author of many papers on chemical analysis by X-rays, radioactivity, the rare earths, and electrolytic conduction. In 1943 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and in 1959 he received the Atoms for Peace Award. 

Atoms for Peace, Dodd, Mead Co, NY (1955 ) 37)US Atomic Energy Commission, Technical Information Service, "The Reactor Handbook, GovtPrintgOff, Washington, DC... 

MCMILLAN, EDWIN M. (1907-1991). An American physicist who won the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1951 along with Glenn T. Seaborg lor their discoveries In the chemistry of the transuranium elements. His work included research in nuclear physics and particle accelerator development as well as microwave radar and sonar. He and his colleagues discovered neptunium and plutonium. He was the recipient of the Atoms for Peace prize in 1963. His Ph D. in Physics was awarded from Princeton University. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency was formed in 1957 with a first mission focused on safeguards, and other missions expressed by President Eisenhower in his famous address about atoms for peace before the United Nations three years before apply atomic energy to the needs of agriculture, medicine and other peaceful activities and provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world . 

H.Mueller, "Elements of Atomic Physics, Prentice-Hall, Nt (1955) 36)D.O.Woodbury, "Atoms for Peace, Dodd, Mead 8c Co, NY... 

In 1951 McMillan and Glenn T. Seaborg received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements. He also received the 1950 Research Corporation Scientific Award and, in 1963, the Atoms for Peace Award along with Professor V. I. Veksler. He retired in 1973. 

The emphasis on production of pure plutonium for weapons continued throughout the Cold War period. The successful control of the chain reaction to power submarines to cruise underwater for weeks rather than hours for the diesel-electric powered substitutes opened up a new option. The contractors that built the nuclear reactors and steam turbines for submarines also served the electric power utilities. Extension of this nuclear technology to domestic electric power production was obvious. President Eisenhower s Atoms for Peace initiative in 1954 opened the way for the nuclear power plants that followed that currently supply about 20% of the electric power to the U.S. power grid. 

In 1950 Bohr wrote an open letter to the United Nations warning of the horrors of nuclear war. In 1955 he organized the first Atoms for Peace Conference. Niels Bohr was one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century, see also Rutherford, Ernest Thomson, Joseph John. 

Born in Budapest in 1885, he began his first radioisotope studies in plants in 1923. In 1934, he left Berlin for pohtical reasons to go to Copenhagen to work with Niels Bohr. In 1935, Ernest Lawrence sent phosphorus-32 by regular mail from California. Hevesy published more than 400 scientific articles, and won the Nobel prize in 1944. In 1959, he received the Atoms For Peace award by the US Atomic Energy Commission. He died on July 5,1966 in Freiburg, Germany. 

He went on to the United States, where until 1945 he worked with other physicists on the atomic bomb development at Los Alamos, New Mexico. His insistence on sharing the secret of the atomic bomb with other allies, to permit international control over nuclear energy, so angered Winston Churchill that he had to be restrained from ordering Bohr s arrest. Bohr worked hard and long on behalf of the development and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. For his efforts, he was awarded the first Atoms for Peace Prize in 1957. He died in Copenhagen on November 18,1962. 

A. M. Weinberg and E. P. Wigner, The physical theory of neutron chain reactors. Atoms for Peace, Geneva, University of Chicago Press, 1958. 

Aluminium clad spent nuclear fuel from research and test reactors worldwide is currently being stored in water filled basins while awaiting final disposition. Much of this fuel was provided to the various countries by the United States of America as part of the Atoms for Peace programme in the early 1950s. Other fuel was provided by the former Soviet Union. The spent fuel has been in water at the reactor sites for up to 40 years, in some cases, awaiting shipment back to the USA or to the Russian Federation. 

As already indicated, the early postwar decades saw an enormous growth of both basic and applied nuclear research. Almost everywhere, certainly in the USA, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan, governments supported nuclear science on a scale never before experienced. At the first Atoms for Peace Conference convened in 1955 at Geneva under the auspices of the United Nations, a vast amount of previously classified information was publicly presented for the first time (PUAE 1956). This conference gave a considerable impetus to the dissemination of nuclear research and the worldwide use of nuclear technology. 

Humankind has already succeeded in the first stage of nuclear power development, i.e., electric power generation with fission reactors, especially with light water reactors (LWRs) obtaining excellent safety records. It has taken the latter half of the twentieth century since Dwight D. Eisenhower s speech Atoms for Peace. However, the issues concerning material conversion and treatment of nuclear waste have been left to this century. 

---