Geneva nuclear conference
The first Geneva nuclear conference (English: International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy ) took place from August 8 to 20, 1955 in Geneva under the auspices of the United Nations . The occasion was provided by Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech Atoms for Peace . It ultimately led to the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Follow-up conferences took place at irregular intervals; the second was held in Geneva from September 1 to 13, 1958, the third from August 31 to September 9, 1964, and the fourth from September 6 to 16, 1971.
The first conference, initiated by the United States in late 1954, was attended by around 1,500 scientists and more than 1,000 conference papers were submitted. In the foreground was the concern about an expected energy shortage in the electricity, but also in the heat and fuel market, and concepts were presented as to how the civil use of nuclear energy could remedy this. Above all, questions of economic viability and capital requirements were discussed, and questions about the safety of nuclear facilities were hardly discussed at all. At this conference, the major nuclear powers, i.e. the USA, USSR, Great Britain and France, gave an insight into their previous activities and plans with regard to the civil use of nuclear energy , i.e. the development and construction of nuclear power plants. At the same time the possibilities of controlling and disseminating fissile material were discussed.
The general mood at the conference was very optimistic about the development possibilities of the civil use of nuclear energy.
The 1st Geneva nuclear conference caused a certain shock to the delegates of Germany, because they got the impression that they had to catch up a 10-year deficit. The Federal Republic it was only after the war with the signing of the Treaty of Paris again allowed to do research in the field of nuclear physics and nuclear engineering.
Foreign Minister Heinrich von Brentano appointed Otto Hahn to head the German delegation, which consisted of 68 members . Members of the German delegation, which could only submit two scientific contributions for discussion, were mainly chemists and physicists such as Erich Bagge , Erwin Willy Becker , Karl Heinz Beckurts , Wolfgang Gentner , Wilhelm Groth , Otto Haxel , Josef Mattauch , Heinz Maier-Leibnitz , Fritz Paneth , Boris Rajewsky , Wolfgang Riezler , Herwig Schopper , Rudolf Schulten and Karl Wirtz as well as some representatives from the federal ministries such as Günther Harkort , Carl Friedrich Ophüls and, very occasionally, representatives from industry such as Wilhelm Boveri, Wolfgang Finkelnburg and Karl Winnacker , but no representatives from the electricity supply company EVU . As a result, the impetus to introduce the civil use of nuclear energy in Germany came primarily from science, politics and industry, not from the energy supply companies.
Web links
- 50 years of the German Atomic Forum eV (PDF file; 982 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Abbreviation in the British Journal of Radiology , p. 452, Volume 28, 1955, viewed December 3, 2009 (English)
- ↑ http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace_Speech,_President_Eisenhower,_December_8,_1953
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://biblio-archive.unog.ch/Detail.aspx?ID=73278
- ↑ the fourth geneva conference ( Memento of the original from August 24, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , IAEA brochure , 17 pages, on iaea.org, viewed December 3, 2009 (PDF, English; 1.8 MB)
- ↑ 1954 - 1956: Negotiation of the IAEA's Statute , in The History of the IAEA , Part I, Chapter III , pp. 31-34, 1997, on iaea.org, viewed December 3, 2009 (PDF, English; 2,3 MB)
