The International Atomic Energy Agency

Historical Reflections, Current Challenges and Future Prospects

Joseph F. Pilat

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000410068
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume offers a wide-ranging examination and discussion of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) past, present and future as it enters its seventh decade.

Including contributions from leading experts across the globe, the book assesses the historical record of the IAEA; the issues and challenges it faces at present; and its future prospects. In doing so, it addresses the primary missions of the IAEA outlined in the IAEA's statute, i.e., to safeguard and promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, as well as the missions over which it is expanding its mandate, including nuclear safety and security. The volume is divided into two parts: Part I focuses on historical recollections and reflections of participants in key events, ranging from a personal account of the initial negotiations of the IAEA to an account by its chairman on the dynamics of the Board of Governors in recent years. Part II covers current and future issues in the IAEA's role in nuclear safeguards, the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and nuclear safety and security.

This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation and arms control, global governance and international security in general.

1Introduction

Joseph F. Pilat^*

DOI: 10.4324/9781003160205-1

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was envisioned in U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower's “Atoms for Peace” speech, delivered to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on December 8, 1953. The IAEA was created in 1957, more than 60 years ago, but its history goes back at least a decade earlier to the Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, written under the auspices of Dean Acheson and David Lilienthal in 1946, and the Baruch Plan that was based on the report. The Baruch Plan was presented to the UN Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) on June 14, 1946, by Bernard Baruch, the U.S. representative to the commission. In his presentation, Baruch stated, “We must provide the mechanism to assure that atomic energy is used for peaceful purposes and preclude its use in war.”¹ The plan proposed:

… the creation of an International Atomic Development Authority, to which should be entrusted all phases of the development and use of atomic energy, starting with the raw material and including:

1. Managerial control or ownership of all atomic-energy, activities potentially dangerous to world security.
2. Power to control, inspect, and license all other atomic activities.
3. The duty of fostering the beneficial uses of atomic energy.
4. Research and development responsibilities of an affirmative character intended to put the Authority in the forefront of atomic knowledge and thus to enable it to comprehend, and therefore to detect, misuse of atomic energy. To be effective, the Authority must itself be the world's leader in the field of atomic knowledge and development and thus supplement its legal authority with the great power inherent in possession of leadership in knowledge.²

The Baruch Plan has been seen, at different times, as idealistic and naïve or as cynical, and Baruch has been criticized for focusing on “condign punishment” for violators and for calling for “no veto to protect those who violate their solemn agreement not to develop or use atomic energy for military purposes.”³

Although the Soviet Union provided two counterproposals to the Baruch Plan, discussions of the U.S. proposal dominated the UNAEC, where the United States and its allies held a 9-to-2 majority. Amid the emerging Cold War, an aggressive Soviet nuclear-weapon program, and Soviet suspicion of U.S. motives, the Baruch Plan languished in the UNAEC as the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom developed nuclear weapons themselves. The Baruch Plan was not realized, and the issue of disarmament was no longer on the table in the same way when the “Atoms for Peace proposal” appeared.

Atoms for Peace was a response to the problems that led to the Baruch Plan, particularly as these problems had worsened over time. In a speech to the United Nations on December 8, 1953, President Eisenhower stated:

… the dread secret, and the fearful engines of atomic might, are not ours alone.

In the first place, the secret is possessed by our friends and allies, Great Britain and Canada, whose scientific genius made a tremendous contribution to our original discoveries, and the designs of atomic bombs.

The secret is also known by the Soviet Union….

If at one time the United States possessed what might have been called a monopoly of atomic power, that monopoly ceased to exist several years ago. Therefore, although our earlier start has permitted us to accumulate what is today a great quantitative advantage, the atomic realities of today comprehend two facts of even greater significance.

First, the knowledge now possessed by several nations will eventually be shared by others—possibly all others.

Second, even a vast superiority in numbers of weapons, and a consequent capability of devastating retaliation, is no preventive, of itself, against the fearful material damage and toll of human lives that would be inflicted by surprise aggression.⁴

Eisenhower then declared:

The governments principally involved, to the extent permitted by elementary prudence, should begin now and continue to make joint contributions from their [military] stockpiles of normal uranium and fissionable materials to an international atomic energy agency. We would expect that such an agency would be set up under the aegis of the United Nations….

The atomic energy agency could be made responsible for the impounding, storage and protection of the contributed fissionable and other materials. The ingenuity of our scientists will provide special safe conditions under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure.⁵

The president did not have a clear notion of the new agency he proposed, but he saw the Soviet Union as an essential member in its future:

The United States would be more than willing—it would be proud to take up with others “principally involved” the development of plans whereby such peaceful use of atomic energy would be expedited.

Of those “principally involved” the Soviet Union must, of course, be one.⁶

He hoped that the relationship would produce benefits that went beyond those related to his substantive proposal. Specifically, he stated that he would support an agency that would “open up a new channel for peaceful discussion and initiative at least a new approach to the many difficult problems that must be solved in both private and public conversations if the world is to shake off the inertia imposed by fear and is to make positive progress towards peace.”⁷

This swords-to-plowshares vision of the nuclear future was less dramatic and sweeping than the failed Baruch Plan. Even though it had been intended to facilitate nuclear arms reductions, it was no longer tied directly to disarmament.⁸ The Atoms for Peace program, as it became known, nonetheless was received with great fanfare and enthusiasm. It would set the foundation for the international nonproliferation regime that Eisenhower had called for in his speech. Over the next five years, the key components of this regime developed. Along with the IAEA, further negotiations led to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which was based on the Atoms for Peace bargain of peaceful nuclear cooperation in exchange for a verified pledge to forgo further development of nuclear weapons.

Despite the widespread acceptance and influence of the U.S. initiative, Atoms for Peace did not end the concerns about the dual nature of the atom that had made the proposal possible. It was criticized on nonproliferation grounds by academic and nongovernmental experts, and some states from the beginning. From the outset, there were concerns that the peaceful nuclear cooperation promised would actually facilitate advances in weapons programs. Atoms for Peace did in fact open the floodgates of nuclear information to at least some degree, through declassification and release of research in all areas but enrichment—and, of course, in weapons production. It fostered the spread of research reactors around the world that were unnecessary for many states, posed a security challenge with highly enriched uranium fuel, and in at least one case provided the basis of a nuclear weapons effort.⁹ Some of those reactors remain a problem today. Moreover, the bank of nuclear material to be established at the IAEA, a central tenet of the proposal, was never realized. Some states made minimal contributions, but the idea soon fell by the wayside. In any case, the initiative's arms control rationale was based on a flawed assumption: nuclear material production was not as great a bottleneck for weapons production as was originally thought, although it remains the greatest hurdle to overcome for any state with an interest in creating a nuclear arsenal. Finally, IAEA safeguards were slow to develop and limited in application, and almost continuously criticized as being neither safe nor an effective guard. Safeguards would expand once the NPT was concluded in the 1970s, but they continued to be criticized on the same grounds, and the debate on their impact has persisted to this day.

Beyond this inherent ambiguity, there initially was some uncertainty in the United States about how to realize the objectives set forward in the speech, including the proposed agency and the ways to bring the Soviet Union into its creation. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of State drafted a statute for the agency, which was fully consistent with the themes in the speech. Within the United States, thinking about the agency proposed in the speech embodied hope that it could improve relations with the Soviet Union and reduce the dangers of nuclear war. Discussions with the Soviets began shortly after Eisenhower's speech.¹⁰ In these initial discussions, however, the Soviets ignored the U.S. position and focused on the limited role the agency could have in disarmament, and noted that the possibility of creating and diverting materials from peaceful to military uses could actually increase the production of nuclear weapons. This element of the response clearly showed that the Soviets understood the dual nature of the atom, and it has been seen as a warning that the proposal could worsen the proliferation problem by encouraging the spread of nuclear materials, equipment, and expertise worldwide. The response involved a reiteration of the Soviet disarmament proposals. Soviet positions had been evolving since the Baruch Plan was put forward. At this time, the Soviet Union accepted the idea of inspections in principle, but it was concerned about possible interference in domestic affairs in practice. The United States, by contrast, saw safeguards as the means of solving the problem of the dangers associated with the possible military uses of peaceful nuclear energy programs.

Although the Eisenhower speech envisioned the proposed agency as being established under the “aegis of the United Nations,” the Soviets at this time called for close relations between the new agency and the UN, with the Security Council as the sole authority to address noncompliance—an arrangement which would allow the Soviets to wield a veto if their interests demanded it. The United States, which was already highlighting the role of the agency in peaceful nuclear cooperation rather than in disarmament, did not believe that the Soviet Union would join the new agency, and made clear to the Soviets that it was prepared to move ahead without their participation. However, the Soviet position changed in September 1954. Soviet negotiators indicated that the issues they raised could be resolved technically and that they were prepared to study U.S. safeguards proposals. This was seen as opening the possibility of Soviet participation in the agency's creation. U.S.-Soviet exchanges on the creation of the agency continued through 1954.

Multilateral negotiations without the Soviets began in December 1954 and, on the basis of an initial U.S. draft, produced a draft statute that was shared with the Soviets on a confidential basis. By 1955, the Soviets formally agreed to enter the negotiations, offered their views on the new agency, participated constructively in the 1955 Geneva Conference on peaceful uses, and engaged in technical meetings with the United States and other states on safeguards. At the same time, they aggressively began to cooperate with China, Eastern Europe, and other socialist allies on peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The negotiations then expanded to include the Soviets and other states in 1956. Based on the existing draft text, and Soviet proposals that supported their interests in tying the agency to the UN and ensuring that it did not operate against Soviet interests, the 12 powers drafted a statute for the IAEA. The Soviet Union’s positions were not all adopted, but it accepted the results.

On September 20, 1956, a UN conference was convened to review the draft. Despite the ongoing crises of the Hungarian revolution and tensions over the Suez Canal, there was no East-West crisis at the conference. Nonetheless, the Soviets reiterated their disarmament proposals, and safeguards were a point of contention. The Soviets refused a U.S. proposal to coordinate their positions, and even tried to remove safeguards references from the draft statute in apparent support of the position of India, Iran, and other developing states that were opposed to safeguards. A compromise that effectively retained safeguards in the statute was proposed and accepted. Generally, the United States and the Soviet Union were prepared to cooperate on the goal of creating the agency, and the IAEA's statute was adopted unanimously on October 23, 1956. The IAEA thus came into being on July 19, 1957.

After these complex and difficult negotiations, the early years of the IAEA saw a remarkable growth in the power and nonpower applications of nuclear energy, in part because of the promotional role outlined in the statute. This role has continued over time and continues to evolve to meet Member States’ needs. Nuclear power production has been challenged by difficult economics; by concerns about proliferation and terrorism; and by nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island in 1979, at Chernobyl in 1986, and most recently at Fukushima Dai-ichi in 2011. Today, long after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and in light of the uncertain long-term impact of Fukushima on global interest in nuclear power, the IAEA has been helping nuclear newcomer states to assess their infrastructure, regulatory, and other needs.

At the same time as the IAEA pursued its promotional mission, its safeguards system was being forged. The emergence of the IAEA safeguards system began a unique experiment in international security cooperation. This system pioneered on-site inspections and involved limited yet unprecedented inroads into Member States’ sovereignty. In the early years, progress on developing and implementing safeguards was slow, as both the inspection technologies and techniques, as well as political acceptance of the endeavor, had to be created. The entry into force of the NPT, which designated the IAEA as the inspecting power, vastly expanded the reach of safeguards. The near-universal scope of the NPT and its indefinite extension in 1995 solidified the global importance of safeguards. The IAEA's safeguards system has evolved over the past 50 years to meet the challenges posed by new technologies, new international undertakings, and new threats.

From the earliest safeguards to the early 1990s, innovations in procedures and technologies allowed IAEA safeguards to significantly improve capabilities. Innovations in nondestructive assay equipment, including neutron coincidence counters and gamma spectroscopy, have provided inspectors with rapid in situ determinations of the concentration, enrichment, isotopics, and masses of nuclear materials. Through these innovative tests, inspectors have been able to collect information that would have been expensive and time consuming, and in some cases impractical, to determine by other means. Advances in miniaturizing these instruments also have provided inspectors with more portable measurement methods that are useful for both routine inspections in declared facilities and in-field application during nonroutine inspections. Additionally, video surveillance devices that monitor spent fuel ponds at reactors, core discharge monitors that monitor fuel movements in on-load reactors and electronic seals, and continuous unattended monitoring of activities in nuclear facilities have all improved the efficiency of inspections by reducing the time that inspectors spend at facilities. All of these devices have been important in providing assurances of material integrity during an inspector's absence by recording surveillance data for periodic review. Automated review stations have provided further gains in efficie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The IAEA’s emerging roles, challenges, and prospects 
for the future: An interview with the Director General
• PART I Historical recollections and reflections
• PART II Current and future issues and prospects
• Appendix: Keynote address to the Conference on the 
International Atomic Energy Agency at 60, held at 
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 
Washington, DC, on November 6-7, 2017: Sixty years 
of Atoms for Peace and development
• Index