ABSTRACT

This chapter draws from the 1946 Acheson-Lilienthal Report to identify measures proposed, more than fifty years ago, to achieve durable denuclearization. The Report proposes comprehensive controls, and a staged transition, but leaves details of staging to political authority. The Report envisions "disclosure," both in the Atomic Energy Commission and then to the Atomic Development Authority—as they cannot make policy without some knowledge how bombs are made—but disclosure of this "theoretical information," they write, "will not essentially alter the present superiority of the United States. Some concerns stressed in the Acheson-Lilienthal Report—mining and "raw materials," most evidently—no longer seem so central to abolition. The Report's authors place the steps they envisage against a backdrop that emphasizes the need for ongoing political deliberation. Apart from building the nuclear weapons and "research and development in atomic explosives"—obviously central questions—the activities concern raw materials.