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The United States and Japanese Atomic Power Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Daniel Wit
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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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.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1956

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References

1 “Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy,” Report of the Panel on the Impact of the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy to the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, I, Washington, D.C., January 1956, p. 97.

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