Gerard C. Smith, "Observations on the Problem of Controlling Against Diversion of Fissionable Material from Nuclear Power Reactors," 17 September 1955, Confidential

Source: Gerard C. Smith, "Observations on the Problem of Controlling Against Diversion of Fissionable Material from Nuclear Power Reactors," 17 September 1955, Confidential Date: Sep 17, 1955 Archive: SAE, box 161, 10. A2 Meeting of Six Governments Geneva 1955 General Correspondence Collection: 60th Anniversary of the International Atomic Energy Agency Oct 26, 2017

Editorial Analysis

Original analysis by the DriftSeas editorial desk. The complete primary-source document, transcribed from the National Security Archive scan, appears in full below.

Controlling the Flow of Atoms: A 1955 Assessment of Reactor Diversion Risks

The memorandum signed by Gerard C. Smith on 17 September 1955 is not a routine technical note; it is a direct product of the first International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference in Vienna. The conference, convened just months after the IAEA’s founding charter entered force, brought together the United States, the Soviet Union, and more than fifty other states to negotiate a common framework for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. In that charged atmosphere, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) tasked Smith—then the AEC’s senior lawyer and a key architect of U.S. nuclear policy—to produce a concise appraisal of how emerging commercial power reactors might become vectors for the clandestine diversion of fissionable material.

The document sits at the intersection of two historic currents. First, the post‑World War II scramble to commercialize nuclear power was accelerating; the United Kingdom’s Calder Hall and the United States’ Shippingport were still years away, but reactor designs were already being prototyped for electricity generation. Second, the Cold War’s espionage battles had taught Washington that the line between civilian and military nuclear programs was porous. The 1955 IAEA charter explicitly tasked the agency with “safeguards” to prevent diversion, yet the technical means to monitor a growing fleet of reactors were still being invented. Smith’s observations therefore function as an early blueprint for what would become the IAEA’s safeguards system.

Smith’s prose reveals three core anxieties. He notes that the bulk of fissionable material in a power reactor—uranium‑235 or plutonium‑239—is embedded in fuel assemblies that, on paper, are difficult to track once they leave the core. He stresses that the United States lacked a comprehensive accounting method for spent fuel, a gap that could allow a determined adversary to extract weapons‑grade plutonium under the guise of routine re‑processing. Second, he flags the emerging market for “dual‑use” reactors in non‑aligned states such as Iceland and Morocco (the two countries listed in the document’s header). Their nascent nuclear programs, he argues, would be attractive targets for covert acquisition because they lacked robust regulatory infrastructures. Third, Smith underscores the diplomatic tension between openness and secrecy: the IAEA’s mandate to share technical information for peaceful purposes conflicted with the United States’ desire to keep the details of its own fuel‑cycle technology out of Soviet hands.

Reading between the lines, the memo hints at an internal debate within the AEC about how aggressively to push for international safeguards. Smith’s tone is cautious rather than alarmist, suggesting that the agency was already weighing the political cost of demanding intrusive inspections from sovereign states. The mention of “six governments” meeting in Geneva earlier in the file points to the 1955 Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, where the United States and the Soviet Union first negotiated the principle of “mutual inspections.” Smith’s observations can be seen as a technical justification for the United States to press for stronger verification measures at that conference.

The legacy of Smith’s 1955 note is evident in the safeguards regime that the IAEA adopted in the 1970s and formalized after the Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entered into force in 1970. Many of the vulnerabilities he identified—fuel‑assembly accounting, spent‑fuel re‑processing, and the proliferation risk posed by civilian reactors in developing nations—became the pillars of the “Additional Protocol” adopted in the 1990s. Moreover, the memo foreshadows contemporary concerns about the “dual‑use” nature of small modular reactors and the challenge of monitoring them in a fragmented international landscape. By framing diversion as a problem of both technology and diplomacy, Smith’s 1955 assessment remains a touchstone for policymakers grappling with the balance between nuclear energy expansion and non‑proliferation security.