Atomic 6.

After consultation with and full agreement of Professor Oliphant
and Dr. Briggs, we propose to proceed upon the following general
basis in connection with atomic energy, having regard to the
unanimous decision of the United Nations Assembly in London. [1]

1. The general form of international control proposed in the
Lilienthal-Acheson report [2] should be supported but the stepwise
process of implementation requires modification for several
reasons.

The report states that the proposals are designed to protect
United States from atom bomb attack. it preserves her supremacy in
atomic armament and industrial and scientific application for a
considerable period. This will accentuate the disparity between
the industrial power of the United States and other nations with
smaller natural resources, such as Australia, in spite of the fact
that the fundamental discoveries of atomic energy were made in
Europe and the United States of America's sources of uranium are
negligible. It is essential to ensure that the sequence of events
involving control of raw materials, release of technical
information, and finally the secrets of the bomb, to United
Nations should occupy the minimum time in order to satisfy other
nations, particularly those possessing raw materials. While
international control of raw materials is acknowledged as the
essential basis, the Lilienthal report asks the Nations to hand
over control of their raw materials in return for a promise of
United States to reveal to United Nations at some indeterminate
time, subject to Congress, its 'Knowhow', factories and stocks of
weapon.

2. The bomb as a military weapon-Control by Inspection.

The difficulty of control depends on the magnitude of the
industrial effort required to produce sufficient bombs to be of
importance in a major conflict. From a comparison with the bombing
of Germany it is estimated that a thousand Nagasaki bombs are
necessary for a serious blow against a major power which
presumably will have taken some precautions against atom bomb
attack. It is probable that the United States of America and
U.S.S.R. would survive many thousands and United Kingdom or
Australia some hundreds of such bombs. The United States of
America and United Kingdom together would require many years to
produce bombs sufficient in number to play a major part against
U.S.S.R., and therefore attempts in the near future to coerce
U.S.S.R. with the threat of atomic warfare would lead her to
further dispersal of industry which could be most easily achieved
by occupation of more territory in Europe and Asia.

A thousand Nagasaki bombs require 5000 to 50,000 tons of uranium,
equivalent to 100,000 to 1,000,000 tons of crude uranium ore and
very large production plants. Hence manufacture on this scale
could not escape detection under any reasonable system of control.

Failure to detect small scale production by a rogue country is not
of major importance.

3. Dangers of delay in control by United Nations.

Delay will aggravate existing tension between Nations. In the
absence of detailed knowledge of American plants other countries
may discover processes more valuable than those of United States
which they may likewise refuse to reveal.

The problems at issue are the physical potentialities for
destruction and the benefits of industrial power and scientific
research. These are not parochial matters, hence delay must arouse
the suspicions of the peoples of the world and shake their
confidence in the abilities of United Nations to deal with the
greatest destructive power known. Delay may create the suspicion
that United States of America is playing for time to increase her
stock pile of bombs until she is thereby in a really dominating
position. That would cause other Nations to divert their uranium
supplies to bomb manufacture to the greater exclusion of the
development of the peacetime benefits of atomic energy.

4. The following recommendations to the Atomic Commission should
therefore be supported.

(a) That prompt action be taken to invest in the United Nations
all rights in raw materials, processes, plants and the products of
plants for the exploitation of all forms of atomic energy, and
that a system of control by inspection, as outlined in the
Lilienthal report is feasible and should be adopted, subject to
modification in the light of technical and political
practicability of some of the proposals. (b) That all information
of importance for the peaceful use of atomic energy be made
available to all Nations through free and open publication,
notwithstanding that some such information may be of military
significance.

(c) That the manufacture of atomic weapons and the stockpiling of
material for military purposes should cease as soon as the
supremacy of United Nations, in the possession of atomic weapons
is assured.

(d) That development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy should
be accelerated, and that supplies of radioactive materials for use
for Meca [3] and scientific purposes should be made available
immediately from existing sources to all workers in these fields.

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