The Road to Zero

The first attempts to eliminate nuclear weapons were made immediately after the first bombs were used. One of the earliest proposals for doing so was elaborated by Robert Oppenheimer with the help of I.I. Rabi and other colleagues, mostly veterans of the Manhattan Project. They wanted to eliminate atomic (nowadays read ‘nuclear’) weapons altogether while simultaneously promoting the development of atomic energy, which they all felt offered great benefits to mankind. They recognized the two could not be separated easily, so they invented an entirely novel scheme for doing so. In brief, they called for the creation of an international control mechanism which would own or otherwise control all steps in the chain of processes leading to any application of nuclear fission, including control of the mineral sources of uranium, the factories for processing nuclear materials, the laboratories engaged in developing them, and so forth. The then still brand new United Nations was thought to be the proper organization for accomplishing all this.