John Batchelor Interviews Henry Sokolski on “Eisenhower: The December 1953 UN Speech ‘Atoms for Peace’ was the origin of proliferation & What is to be done?”

December 22, 2023

CBS Eye on the World interviews NPEC’s Executive Director on “Eisenhower: The December 1953 UN Speech ‘Atoms for Peace’ was the origin of proliferation & What is to be done?”

 

 North Korea’s plutonium-producing light water reactor that just came online was a gift from the United States.

Atoms for Peace and our current enthusiasm to use nuclear power to solve global warming both largely ignore the nuclear weapons proliferation dangers that come with spreading large power reactor programs globally.

How Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program and the IAEA that it established tragically were all too preoccupied with preventing large diversions of bomb fissile materials rather than one or two bombs worth.

Why did Eisenhower think promoting nuclear power would reduce the Soviet threat and why there may be hope that new modes of warfare will reduce the nuclear threat and general?

How we have been very good at promoting the possible benefits of nuclear energy, but relatively poor at hedging against the risks “peaceful“ nuclear energy might be diverted to make bombs.