In December 1953, President Eisenhower, in a memorable address to the
General Assembly of the United Nations, proposed the establishment under
the aegis of the United Nations of an International Atomic Energy Agency
“to serve the peaceful pursuits of mankind.” This proposal captured the
imagination of people everywhere, and negotiations soon began as to the
purpose, structure, scope, and program of such an organization. In
October 1956 an 81-nation United Nations conference unanimously adopted
a statute for the agency, which came into existence a year later with
headquarters in Vienna, Austria. By the end of 1962 the IAEA had 78
member countries. Its most important work has been assisting some of the
less developed nations of the world to begin programs for peaceful use
of atomic energy.
[Illustration: _On December 8, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower
proposed before the United Nations General Assembly that an
International Atomic Energy Agency be established through which all
nations could share knowledge and materials to develop the peaceful
uses of atomic energy for the benefit of all mankind. Seated on the
presidential platform are, left to right, Mr. Dag Hammarskjöld,
Secretary-General of the U. N., Madame Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of
India, President of the General Assembly, and Mr. Andrew Cordier,
Executive Assistant to the Secretary-General._
Courtesy United Nations]
[Illustration: _This 150,000-kilowatt, dual-cycle, boiling-water
reactor, located 35 miles north of Naples, Italy, on the Garigliano
River, was built by General Electric under the United States-Euratom
Joint Program. It achieved criticality on June 5, 1963._]
Even before the international agency became an accomplished fact, the
United States sought on its own to implement the spirit of President
Eisenhower’s proposal. It initiated in 1955 an Atoms-for-Peace Program
under which the United States has made bilateral agreements with some 40
nations for the sharing of information on peaceful uses of atomic energy
and under which the United States has helped other nations to acquire
nuclear reactors and materials for peaceful use.
Mention should also be made of the International Conferences on Peaceful
Uses of Atomic Energy which the United Nations held in Geneva,
Switzerland, in 1955, 1958, and 1964. The 1955 conference was
particularly noteworthy in that it marked the first time that scientists
had met on a worldwide basis to discuss atomic energy. At and following
this meeting much information previously kept secret was made public.