"Atoms for Peace" Was Actually a “Threat to Peace” – AEC Official in 1955

During a discussion with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on the peaceful uses of atomic energy, Philip Farley mentioned that the U.S., the Soviet Union, and other countries had been discussing the importance of controls over nuclear reactor operations and Washington and Moscow’s “common interest in seeing that other countries did not obtain nuclear weapons.” That same day, Farley met with Harold Knapp of the Atomic Energy Commission who, like Farley’s boss, Gerard C. Smith, had been working on a study of controls over the export of fissionable materials for overseas nuclear reactors.

The next day, Knapp read Smith’s paper and Farley read Knapp’s paper which made the point that the “principle threat to peace” was not so much from the export of fissionable materials but from an effect of the U.S. Atoms for Peace program: the “expanded knowledge of nuclear power reactors and plutonium separation.” That meant that any “reasonably advanced” industrial country could “learn from the open literature how to build a plutonium separation plant capable of separating 20 KG a year for about half-million dollars.” “Accordingly, the threat of weapons capability in other countries like the Netherlands, Israel, Argentina and many others is not remote.”

Max Isenbergh, then serving as the Paris embassy’s special attaché for atomic energy, reported to Smith about the French government’s intent to produce nuclear weapons. Isenbergh had received a de-briefing from Ambassador C. Douglas Dillon of his conversation with the French Radical politician Maurice Bourgès-Manoury, then serving as defense minister. One part of the discussion was closely held and not fully discussed in the embassy’s telegraphic report. This was when Bourgès confided to Dillon that “a new unanimity [exists] among virtually all significant political elements on the issue of going ahead with production of nuclear weapons.” The observation, “made in a casual way, was intended as a notice of France's arrival at a firm position on this most important issue.”

Technical information from U.S. firms supplying the French with specialized equipment provided U.S. intelligence with an inkling of French atomic test plans. The French had given up plans to test a sixty-kiloton device and instead test one in the megaton range. The test was to be in the Sahara although a site in the Indian Ocean was under consideration. Moreover, the “French have ordered enough equipment to make complete diagnostic measurements in approximately a five-shot series,” whose explosive yields could be between 100 tons and a megaton. France “is expected to have sufficient plutonium to manufacture devices for two tests by July 1959.”

Although the intelligence report was “unevaluated,” INR must have seen it as reliable enough to make its contents worth disseminating. France’s first nuclear test was in January 1960.

This “eyes only” message reported on a meeting with Israeli Ambassador Avraham Harman, at which Secretary of State Christian Herter said that the Department had “been very disturbed” by information about an Israeli nuclear reactor project. Initially, Herter told Harman, that the Department had learned from U.S. embassy Tel Aviv telegram 486 of plans to announce the construction of a research reactor south of Beersheba.[1] Yet, photographs of the site that Herter showed Harman indicated that the “over-all scope of installation, diameter containment building and capacity power lines [are] far in excess research reactor requirements and could serve reactor of 10 times size that mentioned [in telegram] 486.” According to Herter, the reactor could “produce· sufficient plutonium annually [to] make several atomic bombs.”

Herter said that he hoped that the account of Embtel 486 was accurate because if the Israelis did have a larger nuclear project in mind, “Knowledge of potential nuclear weapons capacity would have very disturbing impact on Middle East and US interests as well as those [of] Israeli themselves.” In reply, Ambassador Harman “disclaimed knowledge of facts and stated he would report US concern and questions to his Government.”

A conversation with Homi Nusserwanji Sethna, a senior official in India’s Atomic Energy Establishment (he later presided over India’s first nuclear test in May 1974) demonstrated the spreading knowledge of plutonium production. Sethna privately rebutted a statement by Homi Bhahba, the chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, that India could produce a bomb in two yearsSethha argued that India “was not interested in producing a nuclear weapon,” but wanted to use nuclear energy for electric power generation. As an example, the nuclear reactor at Tarapur would be operating at a high burnup rate ­– about 3,000 megawatt days (MWD) per ton – suitable for producing electric power, but not for weapons grade plutonium. If India wanted the latter, Sethna explained, “the average burnup of uranium fuel should not exceed 600-800 MWD/ton; this would triple the cost of producing energy from the power plant and is simply out of the question.”

According to the reporting officer, Sidney Sober, with the spread of technology enabling some non-nuclear countries to join the “nuclear club,” it is “reasonable to assume that responsible Indian officials have at least contemplated if not planned or possibly inaugurated some effort at nuclear weapons development.”

During President Kennedy’s last European trip, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk met with top British officials, headed by Foreign Secretary Lord Home and Defense Minister Peter Thorneycroft, for discussion of alliance nuclear issues, mainly the proposed Multilateral Force. British parliamentary opposition to the MLF as a West German “stepping-stone” to a national nuclear capability indicated that the proposal would not get far, although Bundy worried that the Germans would “be dangerous if left out of the party.” According to Rusk, the “alternative was MRBMs [medium-range ballistic missiles] in Germany in German hands.”

The MLF would involve a yet-to-be-determined U.S. role in nuclear launch decisions. Rusk was plainly uncomfortable with proposals for a European combination, e.g., Anglo-French, that did not involve a U.S. role. “The Secretary said that if a European nuclear deterrent means that 5 percent of the West's total nuclear power can decide regarding the use of 95 percent of the West's nuclear power (i.e., U.S. power), Europe should recognize that this was just not a possibility, The. U.S. would not stand for it.” [2]

Drafted by INR China expert Allen S. Whiting (his initials are on the last page), this note on the PRC’s nuclear activities cited “indications … that increase the possibility of an early test.”[3] One such indication was that “Chinese officials recently told a Mali official that Peiping would announce its bomb on this October 1, their national day.” Moreover, the previous May Foreign Minister Chen Yi had taken an optimistic position about China’s nuclear capabilities, declaring that “China had reached the necessary industrial level and that it is not very difficult to perform nuclear experiments.”

According to the note, a test on National Day would “raise morale” by making U.S. escalation of conflict in Southeast Asia “less ominous,” make the 15^th anniversary of the People’s Republic a “truly memorable event,” while giving “the forthcoming National People’s Congress (probably November) and a possibly forthcoming Party Congress (now three years overdue) some meat on which to chew.”

The actual test was a few weeks later than Whiting predicted, on 16 October, but he was so sure that one was imminent that he persuaded Secretary of State Rusk to approve an announcement that Beijing was about to stage a test.

Progress made by U.S. and Soviet negotiators in reaching agreement on the no-transfer language of Articles I and II of the NPT required high-level consultation with President Lyndon Johnson. During a meeting at Camp David, Secretary of State Rusk transcribed a Johnson statement that illuminated his thinking at that point. In keeping with the no-transfer concept, Johnson declared that “responsibility for firing U.S. nuclear weapons rests with the President of the U.S.” He further acknowledged that there was no great pressure for quick action on “alliance nuclear arrangements,” implying that the MLF had low priority. Suggesting continuing concern over West Germany, Johnson mentioned a future need for “treaty arrangements” to “restrain certain allies and preserve the alliance.”

A discussion with Italian diplomat Rinaldo Petrignani demonstrates the limits of the NPT in resolving the dilemmas raised by “Atoms for Peace” in the 1950s. In response to Italy’s proposal for more liberal procedures for withdrawal from the NPT, ACDA official Robert H. Kranich deemed it “premature” to consider terms of withdrawal until the negotiations had advanced further. Moreover, ACDA saw the proposal as “inadvisable” because “it would tend effectively to limit the duration of the treaty to five years,” thus removing the “stable basis” needed for commiting the signatories to nonproliferation. Further, a five year withdrawal option could enable signatories to initiate “preliminary preparations to develop or acquire nuclear weapons even while the treaty is still operative, and then withdraw at the earliest opportunity.”

Petrignani questioned the last point because he thought that the safeguards provisions worked against such preparations. Kranich explained that was not the case: the NPT would not “prohibit preparations for manufacture of nuclear weapons,” such as the stockpiling of plutonium. As for safeguards, they could only prevent the diversion of nuclear materials, but they “cannot detect or prevent preparations for manufacture of weapons unless and until there is such diversion.”

Petrignani “indicated that he had never before quite understood the ‘eight months pregnant’ argument, but that he now did.”

In this Nodis (no distribution) “literally eyes only” message to Secretary Rusk that only a handful of people saw, ACDA Director William C. Foster provided the backstory of the negotiation of NPT Article III on safeguards, one of the treaty’s most controversial articles. The key problem was convincing the Soviets that it would be permissible for member states of the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) to negotiate collectively with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure that the community’s own safeguards arrangements were compatible with NPT standards. While antagonistic to EURATOM, the Soviets agreed to accept U.S. ideas about principles designed to ensure IAEA oversight. When the U.S. and Soviet negotiators concurred on a draft of Article III in early September 1967, the U.S. consented to characterize it in Washington as a “Soviet draft”, while the Soviets agreed to describe it in Moscow as a “U.S. draft.” Foster informed Rusk that it was, in fact, a “Soviet delegation draft, but obviously we helped.” While the latest draft moved the process forward, it took months before Moscow and Washington, in consultation with EURATOM, agreed to final language for Article III.