Today, the United Nations has it’s own agency known as the International Atomic Energy Agency that has similar goals to Niels. The agency was established in 1957 due to the increasingly high amount of pressure to try and relegate the use of nuclear energy on an international level.

The IAEA is said to have three main missions:

1. To promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
2. To prevent the use of nuclear energy for military purposes.
3. To prevent nuclear accidents.

However, there is one thing that the IAEA doesn’t do. They don’t hold the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons; this is mainly due to the Soviet Union refusing to give up their nuclear weapons at the time of the agency’s formation.

As the rapid advancement of technology and industry continued throughout the 20th century, so did the destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons, such as the development of hydrogen bombs.

A hydrogen bomb uses the heat generated by an atomic bomb, to perform nuclear fusion — which is when the nuclei of an atom, in this case, a Hydrogen nuclei, fuses together with other nuclei to form a new element, in this case, a Helium nuclei.

For a more in-depth look at hydrogen fusion, look at this annotation!

How strong is a hydrogen bomb?

A hydrogen bomb is a thousand times more powerful than an atomic bomb. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima which killed 140,000 people had the power of 13 kilotons; a hydrogen bomb has the power of 10 megatons. All the explosions that occurred throughout World War II combined to only two megatons — 20% of a hydrogen bomb’s total power.

Here is an interesting article comparing an atom bomb and a hydrogen bomb!

The secrecy of the aforementioned Manhattan Project was one of the problems standing in the way of reaching an agreement betwwen nations on the matter. The full knowledge of the project was known by very few such as President Roosevelt and Churchill; Vice-President Truman didn’t even know the Manhattan Project existed until he became President!

The Soviet Union’s leader, Joseph Stalin, despite being allies with the United States and Great Britain during World War II, weren’t even told about the project. When the Soviet leaders discovered the United State’s plans for an atomic bomb, a great amount of distrust formed between the United States and the Soviet Union — thus making it harder for the two nations to cooperate together on the matter.

Bohr and many other scientists working on the atomic bomb project suspected that the only way for countries to give up their supply and developmental plans involving atomic bombs would be if everyone benefited from the acquisition. This is where the United Nations came into play. If the United Nations controlled the atomic bomb supply, the bombs would be in neutral hands; therefore, the power of the bombs wouldn’t be abused and will ensure global safety for everyone.

The aggressive powers Niels is referring to is the Axis Powers. The three major Axis Powers were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the Japanese. The goal of the Axis Powers was to form empires in Europe and Asia, which they nearly accomplished.

The combatants of the Axis Powers were known as The Allies The three major powers in The Allies were the United States, British Commonwealth, and the Soviet Union. The goal of the Allies was to stop the expansion of the Axis Powers, which they would accomplish. Even though the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during this war, they still had a disliking for each other, they just had a much bigger enemy in Germany; this is why they were enemies throughout the Cold War.

Remember that Niels is quoting a previous message sent to President Roosevelt before the war ended.

Niels prediction that using atomic energy for nuclear power will become significant in industry is correct.

Today, nuclear power accounts for nearly 1/5th of the United States electricity; there is 100 operating nuclear power plants spread out over 31 different states.

In 2012, nuclear power generated the largest percentage of electricity in seven states:

• State Percent
• Vermont 74.4
• South Carolina 53.0
• New Jersey 51.7
• Illinois 48.8
• Connecticut 47.8
• New Hampshire 42.5
• Virginia 40.5

Also, nuclear power provided 12% of the world’s electricity production in 2011. There are thirteen countries world-wide that produce at least one-quarter of their total electricity through nuclear power.

Read more about nuclear power production here and here.

After the war ended, the United States formed the United States Atomic Energy Commission. This agency’s purpose was to control the development and research of atomic energy after the war. Furthermore, the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act of 1946 transferred control of atomic energy research from the military to the people.

Despite there being some form of regulation on atomic energy in the United States, there was little to none on an international level at this time. There were several calls for action, such as Bohr’s, to put American nuclear arms under international control in order to prevent an arms race and prevent any further use of atomic bombs, but these proposals would never make it through due to the United Nations and the Soviet Union not reaching mutual terms.

The Manhattan Project was kept a major secret from the public eye in hopes of preventing the Axis Powers from finding out that they were developing atomic bombs, too. It is estimated that a very small portion out of the 100,000+ that worked actually knew what they were working on.

A manager after the war said this in an interview:

Well it wasn’t that the job was tough… it was confusing. You see, no one knew what was being made in Oak Ridge, not even me, and a lot of the people thought they were wasting their time here. It was up to me to explain to the dissatisfied workers that they were doing a very important job. When they asked me what, I‘d have to tell them it was a secret. But I almost went crazy myself trying to figure out what was going on

At the time of Bohr’s writing of this letter, there were multiple new discoveries about atoms from scientists all over the world since the beginning of the 20th century despite there being troubled relationships between nations, limiting cooperation, especially the years before World War II. Some of these discoveries include:

• The introduction of the Rutherford Model — which explained that the majority of the mass and the protons were located in the nucleus of the atom.

• Isotopes were discovered by Frederick Soddy.

• The invention of the Bohr Model, which I explained in this annotation.

• Otto Hahn successfully performed nuclear fission; this experiment led to the development of atomic bombs.

This American-British atomic energy project Niels is talking about is now known as the Manhattan Project. The Manhattan Project started in the middle of World War II, and the goal of the project was to figure out how to take atomic energy, and use it to make a bomb. The project was kept a secret, and the research cities were spread out through the United States and Canada.

The destruction the atomic bombs did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki made many scientists, such as Bohr and others who worked on the Manhattan Project, wary of the use of atomic bombs for warfare. Immediately after World War II, many countries started to develop and test their own atomic bombs; the development of atomic bombs in rival countries, predominately the United States and the Soviet Union, led to the start of the Cold War. Even though no actual battles occurred throughout the Cold War, there was the threat of rival countries launching atomic bombs at each other.

Many people were afraid that a country with atomic bombs would become too powerful and could attempt to build an empire; such as Germany’s attempt at building an empire during World War II. This prompted many people to want to have regulations on atomic bombs. One of the proposed regulations was to put the bombs under the United Nation’s control so no country can try to use the bombs for conquest.