The United States and Japanese Atomic Power Development

Abstract

MANKIND'S latest technological triumph—the ability to split certain atoms and harness the resultant energy for either destruction or construction—constitutes one of the most provocative developments in modern international relations. It not only creates the greatest opportunity for suicide yet available to humanity; it also introduces a new stage in the scientific, industrial, and technological revolutions which have given modernity its primary characteristics. For atomic power constitutes an entirely new source of energy capable of supplementing or even of replacing that traditionally derivable from fossil fuels and falling water. Moreover, the amounts of fissionable matter necessary to produce it are so small, in contrast to existing sources of power, that problems of fuel transportation are almost completely eliminated.