The Atoms for Peace program, announced by President Dwight Eisenhower at the United Nations in December 1953, constituted a new international effort to regulate the uses of nuclear energy. With its ethical and political justifications, it thus provides an important case study in the control of one specific form of science and technology.

Background

Following the Soviet Union's rejection of the 1945 Baruch Plan for the international control of atomic energy, passage of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 established a U.S. policy to prevent the spread of nuclear technology by secrecy and denial. Even exchanges of information with U.S. allies who had cooperated in the development of the atomic bomb were prohibited.

By the end of 1953, however, it was apparent that the policy of restriction had failed. The Soviet Union had joined the United States as an atomic weapons state, and both...