Belief-based Energy Technology Development in the United States: A Comparative Study of Nuclear Power and Synthetic Fuel Policies By Chi-Jen Yang

Belief-based Energy Technology Development in the United States: ...

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Atomic Energy Act of 1946

Nuclear scientists were aware that the atomic monopoly could not be maintained. Theodore Rockwell, a Manhattan Project veteran, wrote,

The papers and the radio [in 1945] were full of talk about the implications of the fissioned atom for the future, how important it was to protect “the secret,”…and we knew they were talking nonsense. There was no secret a spy could steal that would enable a foreign power to build an A-bomb. We knew that any industrialized nation willing to put the effort and the resources into it could learn to build a Bomb, no matter how hard we tried to protect “the secret.” The most important secret had been revealed at Hiroshima: it could be done…There is little else to protect.⁶

Despite the scientists' explanation, President Truman was not convinced. The U.S. government's first postwar action on nuclear power was to guard the secret. Robert Oppenheimer recalled a conversation with President Truman,

Truman: When will the Russians be able to build the bomb?

Oppenheimer: I don’t know.

Truman: I know.

Oppenheimer: When?

Truman: Never.⁷

President Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands. The act established the AEC, which was to assume control over all facilities for the production of fissionable material, and to own all fissionable material. The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) was created as the congressional authority to oversee the AEC activities.

The Manhattan Project produced three atomic bombs. The first was tested in the desert in New Mexico; the others exploded in Japan. At the end of the Second World War, the U.S. government had no stockpile of