222 



was put into operation by NEA and not by Euratom, despite the fact 

 that the plant was built at Mol, Belgium, within a Euratom state to 

 process fuel from Euratom projects. 215 



Duplication in nuclear activities between the NEA and Euratom 

 extends to many areas including safety regulations, research, rules for 

 third party liability, and maritime nuclear propulsion. In maritime 

 nuclear propulsion, however, NEA was not successful and in 1962 

 abandoned that field to Euratom. On the other hand, NEA became 

 a useful direct channel of communication between Euratom and other 

 European countries, particularly the United Kingdom. The NEA's 

 international joint undertakings, the Halden and Dragon projects, 

 provided Euratom with its first opportunities for nuclear research. 



It would appear that Euratom's usefulness is handicapped by the 

 dispersion of its member states' human and financial resources between 

 its own programs and those of the NEA and the IAEA. 



Proposals for New Research Functions for Euratom 



As nuclear energy in Europe has moved more into the industrial 

 sector for the design and manufacture of nuclear powerplants and 

 nuclear fuel, the laboratories of Euratom have had less demand for 

 their services. Instead, the final stages of development of competitive 

 nuclear power technologies have occurred in the laboratories of indus- 

 trial firms behind barriers of trade secrecy. What then will become 

 of Euratom's laboratories ? The answer to this question is still evolving, 

 and can have significance for American diplomacy. For example, a 

 successful redeployment of Euratom's scientific and technical assets to 

 resolve the problems of energy supply and conservation might not 

 only reduce Europe's dependence upon uncertain energy imports, but 

 also bring European manufacturers into a world market which the 

 United States hopes to dominate. Additionally, the success or failure 

 of efforts to redeploy Euratom's laboratories may provide useful in- 

 sights for the United States in dealing with its own problems of recon- 

 version of technological personnel and facilities from aerospace and 

 defense to other civil functions. One function for American diplomacy 

 will be to obtain current information on these evolutionary features of 

 Euratom for the benefit of U.S. policy makers. 



THE m'kINNEY REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS OF 10 5 9 



An early proposal that Euratom extend the scope of its technologi- 

 cal activities into non-nuclear fields is to be found in the 1950 report 

 of Robert McKinney to the Joint. Committee on Atomic Energv. Not- 

 ing how Europe's need for nuclear power had by then receded, he 

 questioned whether nuclear power for the sake of technological pres- 

 tige carried as much weight in the post-Sputnik era as it had previ- 

 ously. Tailing attention to a wide and growing scientific and tech- 

 nological disparity between Western Europe and the United States, 

 he speculated as to what European scientists could accomplish within 

 a more broadly based scientific community. A new course of action 

 for Euratom might be to emphasize collective creation of new sci- 



*™ Folneh, op. clt, p. 130. 



