In search of the peaceful atom

Abstract Whatever became of the ‘peaceful atom’? Three decades ago, in the mid-1950s, it was all the rage. US President Dwight Eisenhower, addressing the General Assembly of the United Nations, had launched ‘Atoms for Peace’ - both the phrase and the programme. One of its first major manifestations was the inaugural Geneva Conference on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, in 1955. The title will be echoed later this year, albeit with salient differences, when the UN Conference on International Cooperation in the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy convenes, once again in Geneva. For a UN megaconference it has been given an unfortunate acronym. PUNE looks and sounds entirely too much like ‘puny’. Looking back to the expectations of three decades ago — to say nothing of those only a decade ago — some might consider the label apt. What, indeed, has become of the ‘peaceful atom’?