1821 



The discovery of nuclear fission as a source of energy occurred on 

 the threshold of a period in history when the energy needs of heavy 

 industry and of the population at large in the developed world were 

 to begin to exceed the commercially available supply. The future need 

 for nuclear energy as an increasing proportion of the total energy 

 supply was foreseen at the time of the Atoms for Peace message. 

 There was then, however, no special sense of urgency in this regard, 

 and the United States took the practical course of looking to the 

 European nations — whose more urgent energy requirernents made 

 necessary for them what was not yet necessary, or politically and 

 commercially feasible, in America — to work out the problems of 

 establishing a nuclear energy industry. 



Dr. Donnelly describes the situation as it was before the Atoms 

 for Peace proposal: 



. . . prototype nuclear powerplants had to be designed, built, and put into 

 operation to provide engineering and operating experience for the nuclear indus- 

 tries and the electric utilities. The AEC wished to get on with this demonstration, 

 but its nuclear power program became caught up in the controversy of public 

 versus private generation of electricity. One pragmatic solution was to build 

 demonstration plants overseas. Arranging such demonstrations became the task 

 of the diplomats. The AEC supported the idea of building demonstration plants 

 abroad. In 1952, AEC Commissioner T. Keith Glennan forecast an increasing 

 demand abroad for nuclear power: "This demand naturally will arise first where 

 present costs of electrical energy are high and this suggests that such a program 

 may have an important place in a future Point Four program." Europe was a 

 likely location because it needed electricity and costs of European electricity 

 were higher than in the United States, thus setting an easier economic goal for 

 the designers and engineers. AEC Commissioner Henry D. Smyth endorsed the 

 idea that the nuclear power stations might be built abroad with U.S. financial 

 help through Point Four funds. He too pointed out that since power production 

 in the United States was much cheaper than in other countries, the economic 

 incentive for nuclear power would be greater abroad. 



By the early 19o0s nuclear power had begun to attract the interest of the makers 

 and executors of foreign policy. Still it remained of limited import as the govern- 

 ments and diplomatic services of the United States and its aUies struggled to 

 assure the survival of a free Western Europe. The experience then with a massive 

 outpouring of U.S. financial and technical aid through multinational organizations 

 was to point the way for later multinational ventures in nuclear power.*" 



A climate of expectation and near-readiness, then, had been estab- 

 lished; Atoms for Peace provided the stimulus to action. There fol- 

 lowed the building of new multilateral institutions, the forming of 

 special bilateral and multilateral relationships, and the developing of 

 extensive patterns of research, information exchange, and negotiations 

 on international agreements. 



"Interdependence" is an abstraction; patterns, relationships, and 

 institutions give it concrete meaning.*" Nuclear energy has brought 

 nations and people together in many ways, in both fear and hope, 



"8 /6i(/., pp. 143-144. 



<" Professor Robinson adds: "The plain truth is that, today, the peoples of the world and their official 

 spokesmen have no option but to worship at nationalism's altar. There exist absolutely no alternative 

 s.vrabols (and these are crucial) toward which they can gravitate and upon which they can firmly fix their 

 loyalty. . . . The problem is that of creating images, flowing from the realities of interdependence and 

 transcending the nation-state system, with which the earth's peoples can identify. . . . The medieval 

 church accomplished a somewhat analogous feat, thereby causing the deferral of nationalism itself. . . . The 

 framers of the American Constitution undertook a superb attempt to reconcile unity with diversity in a 

 country then very far from being homogeneous and one which was not wholly unlike a world-into-itself. . . . 

 I would add that, if we prove too fearful or imimaginaii ve to face up to the question of reconciling . . . ideals 

 on a global scale, the undirected course of events may cause us to end up, historically, 'either with mince- 

 meat or monoUth'." . . 



Finally: "The psychological problem inheres in the difficulties of making interdependence an inspiring 

 ideal, so that it wiU cease to be seen as a menacing competitor to patriotic pride and self-determination. 

 Interdependence has come into its own as a fact, but not as a philosophy." 



