Abstract

Weapons or Welfare?: Fission Can Go Two Ways

Back in 1946 and 1947, people were warned that world safety required international ownership of all nuclear material and all plants capable of producing it. The nuclear fuel that would stoke an atomic-power plant was also the nuclear explosive in the atomic bomb. Now people find atomic power moving rapidly toward realization with atomic-power discussions already under way between the United States and a number of friendly nations. These discussions assume that in a few years the U.S. will be supplying those nations with the nuclear fuel. Moreover, after just about the same interval disarmament talks between West and East are showing renewed vitality, in the interim the United States and the Soviet Union have each amassed great stock piles of nuclear explosives, yet demands for international ownership of these volcanic hoards seem to have all but disappeared from the disarmament negotiations.