Demand is growing for nuclear technologies for peaceful uses, for example, to address the need for carbon-free energy generation to mitigate global warming and to achieve many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Given that the NPT has been fundamental in enabling the widespread peaceful use of nuclear technologies, this episode explores how to maintain the treaty’s global relevance and to support the continued expansion of peaceful nuclear cooperation in the coming decades.

Since the enactment of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the world has made great strides in applying nuclear technology to medicine, agriculture, industry, and energy generation. The negotiation of the treaty and the additional arrangements that followed its entry into force gave countries the confidence that these advances could be made without contributing to the spread of nuclear weapons. It also opened up multiple avenues for countries to obtain peaceful nuclear cooperation and created an economic environment that leveled the playing field for technology suppliers and recipients alike. This episode explores just how the NPT benefitted peaceful nuclear cooperation in the decades following its negotiation.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is founded upon three fundamental pillars: Non-Proliferation, Peaceful Uses and Disarmament. This second episode examines the, at times, tense and unpredictable process by which the various parts of the NPT came to be, and how the treaty created a framework for expanding peaceful nuclear cooperation and reaping the many benefits of nuclear technology. 

When nuclear fission was first discovered, its potential was undeniable, both for great progress and profound destruction. Knowing this, countries around the globe agreed to draft an international treaty that would protect the world from nuclear war and enable the peaceful use and sharing of nuclear technology. This inaugural episode of Sharing the Atom explores the conditions that led to the negotiation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the limits of peaceful nuclear cooperation before the treaty, and how the desire for additional cooperation contributed to the agreement.

Sharing the Atom, a special podcast from the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Argonne National Laboratory, takes you on a journey from the discovery of nuclear fission to the development of global commitments and systems to also use that discovery for good. 

Sharing the Atom tells the story of how world leaders came together to develop a political and legal framework that enables the pursuit of nuclear technologies for peaceful use and how that framework is needed more than ever today.