ABSTRACT
Existing explanations of why the Atoms for Peace program was initiated and promoted underemphasize what was first and most rationed in the program's history—its nuclear arms control objectives The program's original arms control objectives—to establish an international nuclear fuel bank that would eventually help reduce U.S. and Soviet nuclear weapons stockpiles and encourage nuclear control— were surprisingly specific and persistent in the program's public presentation. Thus, the program and its agency, the IAEA, were presented even late in 1957 as logical parts of a U.S. formal disarmament effort to establish a military fissile material production cutoff.
