Nuclear Power and Oil Capital in the Long Twentieth Century

Abstract

Over more than sixty years since the 1953 Atoms for Peace program was launched, the dominant tendency in public discourse to separate nuclear power into peaceful and military uses has obscured the fact that both aspects of nuclear power (pithily known as “dual-use”) are mutually dependent and inextricably tied. Moreover, the commanding presence of nuclear weapons in the high-stakes nuclear brinkmanship that has dominated the post-1945 strategic and geopolitical landscape has masked the important interlocking relationship between fossil fuel and nuclear energy industries that has been central to the consolidation of a U.S.-led global power bloc.