Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, General; The United Nations, Volume I

501.BC Atomic/6–2047: Telegram

The Acting United States Representative at the United Nations (Johnson) to the Secretary of State

secret
us urgent

New York, June 20, 1947.

Unnumbered. Relay AmEmbassy London for Arneson from Osborn. 1. Reurtel 3359, June 19.¹ Results talk Conant,² Tolman³ and others and better understanding of working papers, George Thomson now cooperating better with McNaughton, De Rose and ourselves. We therefore discussed your cable with Thomson.

2. While United States principle that security is overriding consideration indicates necessity that nations could not decide on the location of their own facilities, we may suggest possible clarification of that point in paper 39.⁴ Instead of giving agency full responsibility for determining strategic balance of facilities, this responsibility might possibly be carried out by agency within limitations of an over-all quota plan approved in the treaty or by the Security Council. Moreover responsibility of agency for location strategic facilities within each nation might be modified by stating various limitations under which the agency would exercise this responsibility. Such important questions as whether plants could be located underground or in strategically secure positions, such as mountain ranges have had no careful examination and must be fully considered by all governments. In other words, we recognize that the agency must not be given unlimited powers in these respects which would overload their administrative and political difficulties and afford Russians arguments for effective propaganda against proposal.

3. Thomson still feels ownership by agency of facilities not desirable but willing to concede ownership of materials to agency.

4. Important you should know that Thomson has disclosed to Conant, Tolman and Osborn that he had personally developed the idea for a plan under which all production nuclear fuel and all plants capable of dangerous activities would be prohibited for a considerable period to [of] time, say, 20 years or until power development had reached stage of known economic value. Under such plan considerable experimentation and development with denatured nuclear fuel in relatively small quantities and continuation laboratory research of non-dangerous sort would of course be continued. Thomson’s plan might conceivably be somewhat modified to provide for perhaps two small power developments under the agency of limited danger because of their small size. In any event, power development would proceed but at a slower pace and under whole plan envisaged in present working papers. If adopted, the major questions of strategic balance and the existence of large quantities of undenatured nuclear fuels and more dangerous plants would be deferred to be taken up by the nations at a later time. We felt that you should have this information and particularly that you should recognize that it was conceived solely by Thomson and discussed informally with us. We have as yet not formed an opinion and have no expression on it from our government, and Thomson does not know views of United Kingdom. We understand he has sent personal cable to Jebb asking certain persons in government consider this possibility and has also written a number of personal letters being sent by air mail today to certain members Anderson Committee.⁵ We understand Thomson feels this idea of his would be very difficult to accept but that it offers the only hope he has yet had for putting Russians in such a position before world opinion that there might be some slight possibility of their entering into the treaty.

5. We are still looking at this work solely from point of view of what would be an acceptable treaty if it actually became effective, but Thomson seems inclined to think about papers in terms of their not being accepted. [Osborn.]

Johnson

1. Telegram 3359 is not printed, but see the record of the June 18 meeting it describes, p. 519.
2. Dr. James B. Conant, Consultant, United States Delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission; Member, General Advisory Committee of the United States Atomic Energy Commission; Chairman of the National Defense Research Committee of the Office of Scientific Research and Development.
3. Dr. Richard C. Tolman, Consultant, United States Delegation to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission; physicist, California Institute of Technology.
4. AEC/C.2/39.
5. The United Kingdom Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy, of which Sir John Anderson was chairman.