Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

I was but a babe when the Atomic Age began -- babe in the infant sense, babe -- and a mere tot when the decision was made to tame the mighty atom. Viewed from this distance, Atoms for Peace (as the taming project was called) seems impossibly wrongheaded, an invitation to mischief, suspicions of mischief and mischievous suspicions of mischief.

Atoms for Peace, announced with grandiose fanfare by President Eisenhower, was the launching of the civilian nuclear-power industry. No longer was the split atom to be the symbol only of hideous warfare on a scale unimaginable to humans before Hiroshima; now our smiling atomic friend was to power the all-electric homes of our future, a cheerful accomplice to nothing more threatening than Westinghouse and General Electric. Better yet, countries that cowered in fear of our nuclear might would soon become happy customers of our nuclear bounty.

Flash forward half a century, and both Iran and, more recently, Syria stand as testimony to the lunatic flaw in that strategy. If the same technology, embodied in the same infrastructure, can be used either (or both) for peace and war, one's ability to detect preparations for war is seriously, if not fatally, compromised. And a country which intends nothing more than the ego boost (and power boost) of a civilian nuke plant may not mind a bit of vagueness about whether the centrifuge array can enrich to greater than three percent, the way Saddam didn't mind a bit of vagueness about his capabilities, just to keep the nasty neighbors in check. When the vagueness proves to be, or can be used to seem, truly threatening, as we learned in 2003, it can be too late for all concerned.

How much easier this current moment would have been if nukes were weapons of war, period. Of course, then we wouldn't be looking at a nearly $60 billion bill for the country's only high-level nuclear waste disposal facility, Yucca Mountain, years away from opening, and only a couple of decades from closing, having reached its storage capacity. Then, while the Mountain only has to protect its contents for the next several thousand years (warning signs are to be erected in less than a dozen current human languages -- save your dictionaries, folks), our mid-century quest will be for the next storage site, and the next.

But how much easier life on the world stage would be, as well. Indonesia wouldn't at this very moment be contemplating nuclear plants near the site of active volcanoes, and A.Q. Khan might be far better known (and perhaps even prosecuted) as a lunatic rogue threat to world peace, having sold or given nuclear knowhow and technology to, among others, Libya, North Korea and Iran, from his position as the father of Pakistan's A-bomb.

Atoms for Peace allowed everything to be fudged. We just need a clean source of electricity, the plant-builders say. They're hiding their true intentions, the war-mongers say.

And we, trapped in the great middle, can just say, "Thanks a lot, Ike. Next life, try promoting Heroin for Peace."