General Assembly

Report to the General Assembly: In accordance with a resolution adopted during the fourth regular session of the General Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the fourth report of IAEA to the UN General Assembly consisted of the annual report of the Board of Governors to the General Conference, covering the period July 1, 1959, to June 30, 1960, together with a supplement dealing with developments, including action taken by the General Conference, during the period July 1 to September 30, 1960. The report noted that during the period under review the preparatory activities of the Agency had begun to bear fruit and that in most domains the year had been the first full year of normal operations. One of the main goals of the Agency, the report continued, was to foster the safe use of nuclear power under economically competitive conditions, but in this area there were still innumerable problems to overcome. Since the cost of generating electricity from nuclear power plants, although steadily declining, was still substantially higher than that of producing conventional power except in a few special cases, the earlier nuclear power plans of a number of countries had been revised and construction of plants was not proceeding at the rate foreseen some years ago. With regard to reactor technology, the Board reported that work was being done to improve the performance of reactors and to reduce their costs of operation by detailed technical modifications, although the cost of research on advanced reactor concepts was so high that only a very few major industrial countries had the necessary material resources to conduct such research. While the Board considered it unlikely that nuclear—propelled ships would become economically competitive with conventional ships in the near future, progress had been made in this sphere in the year under review, as witnessed by the commissioning of a nuclearpropelled ice-breaker and the launching of the first nuclear merchant ship.