Department of State Disarmament Files
Memorandum by the Deputy United States Representative on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (Osborn) to the Director of the Office of Special Political Affairs (Rusk)
Subject: Policy regarding the eventual destruction of atomic weapons.
I have read carefully the extract of the minutes of the meeting of the Secretaries of State, War and Navy, on August 7, on the above subject.1 I note the suggestion in the last paragraph that after I have had the benefit of the views expressed at this meeting I should approach member governments of the AEC to get further discussion of this point indefinitely postponed.
All friendly governments would be glad to postpone the subject. Most of them think it is not a proper subject to discuss until the actual time arrives for implementation of the treaty. The “matter of destruction” came up because it was embodied in one of the Russian amendments to the first report. The Russians may bring it up again at any time and there is no way we can prevent their doing so.
In the original debate on this subject the US took the position that the destruction of “atomic weapons” without destroying the nuclear fuel contained therein had little meaning since the nuclear fuel itself was the “dynamite” and the rest of the weapon was simply the mechanism by which the “dynamite” was set off. The real question therefore is what to do with the nuclear fuel.
If there should be a treaty signed within the next few years there [Page 602] will be large quantities of U235 and of plutonium in the US and probably none in the rest of the world. The other nations, especially Russia, would be unwilling to have all this nuclear fuel stored in the US until there would be peaceful uses for it in other parts of the world. The US would certainly be unwilling to distribute it. Canada and some of the others have said that the destruction of nuclear fuel would be vandalism.
Nonetheless, I believe that at the right time the US should propose its destruction. Then, if the others want to come back and propose that it be stored in the US until there is actual use for it for power purposes, we might consider that alternative.