This book provides, for the first time in a single publication, a collection of basic documents relating to the international law of nuclear energy. The series of introductions facilitate the understanding of the documents and their context. They embrace the four concerns associated with the safe and peaceful use of nuclear energy, i.e. to ensure: that nuclear energy is used in conformity with basic safety standards; that nuclear material and nuclear facilities are protected against theft and sabotage; that nuclear facilities are not subject to attack during armed conflict; and that nuclear material and facilities are not used for military purposes. The book is an invaluable reference work for all those working in the field of international nuclear law and the regulation of the use of nuclear energy as well as for teachers and students of law.

"Mohammed ElBaradei is one of the genuinely great leaders of his generation."--Graham T. Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government and Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

As the director of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei played a key role in the most high-stakes conflicts of our time. Contending with the Bush administration's assault on Iraq, the nuclear aspirations of North Korea, and the West's standoff with Iran, he emerged as a lone independent voice, uniquely credible in the Arab world and the West alike. As questions over Iran's nuclear capacity continue to fill the media, ElBaradei's account is both enlightening and fascinating.

ElBaradei takes us inside the nuclear fray, from behind-the-scenes exchanges in Washington and Baghdad to the streets of Pyongyang and the trail of Pakistani nuclear smugglers. He decries an us-versus-them approach and insists on the necessity of relentless diplomacy. "We have no other choice," ElBaradei says. "The other option is unthinkable."

On December 8, 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower proposed in a speech to the United Nations that nuclear nonproliferation be promoted by offering peaceful nuclear technology to countries that would renounce nuclear weapons. Today the value of that basic trade-off -- atoms for peace -- is in question, along with the institutions that embody it. Deployment of weapons by India and Pakistan, noncompliance with safeguards by North Korea and Iran, and the threat of nuclear terrorism have weakened the image of the Nonproliferation Treaty. And new proposals and technologies for peaceful uses of nuclear power are coming forward, though they are accompanied by the realization that 1950s hopes for nuclear energy "too cheap to meter" were unrealistic.

The twenty-five contributors to Atoms for Peace grapple in many ways with nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and the future of nuclear energy. They include officials and scientists from a wide range of agencies and institutions. Among them are officials or former officials from Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Canada, Korea, and Japan, from the U.S. departments of state, energy, and defense, the U.S. Senate, the National Security Council, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, MIT, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the College of William and Mary, and the University of California.

Atoms for Peace also includes a set of fundamental speeches and documents relating to Atoms for Peace and its institutions.