In May 1977 about 2,000 protestors, some of them people I knew, occupied the site of an under-construction nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire.

Six months later, when the United Nations issued two stamps honoring the 20th anniversary of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the New York Times dryly noted, “…the United Nations is again devoting philatelic emphasis to atomic energy. The subject has become a matter of increasing controversy in a world that is not sure how safe atomic energy is in its peaceful uses and how unthinkable in time of war.”

Such ambivalence was not on display on February 10, 1958, when the UN marked the establishment of IAEA by issuing a 3-cent and an 8-cent stamp that together are today’s #stampoftheday. Technically, they’re yesterday’s #stampofthe day. But yesterday, I overlooked the fact that while the US Coast Survey was founded on February 10, 1807, the stamp honoring its 150th birthday, was issued on February 11, 1957, which meant it should have been today’s #stampoftheday.

Since today is about the promise of nuclear power, as seen in the 1950s, perhaps it’s ok to do a little time-shifting. That promise is wonderfully illustrated by the image on today’s stamps, which were designed by Robert Perrot, a French artist who created several stamps for the UN. In the stamp, the UN emblem casts light up on an atom, suggesting, UN officials said at the time, “the peaceful uses of atomic energy” and IAEA’s role in encouraging those uses.

That flawed promise fascinated me at the time of Seabrook. So while I didn’t protest, I did write a play in 1978 that featured a door-to-door salesmen hawking home-sized nuclear power reactors that would, as proponents claimed in the 1950s, make power so cheap it wouldn’t be metered. The play was performed at a spring arts festival at Wesleyan. A few years later, Paul “No Nukes” Hammer, who had been in the original production, mounted a revival (i.e. he staged it at the play in New Haven). I don’t believe I have the script and I hope no one else does either.

While IAEA, like nuclear power, didn’t live up to its backers’ hopes, it has sometimes played an important role, which is noteworthy, given its limited mandate. It grew out of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace” address at the UN, which called for an international body to both regulate and promote the peaceful use of nuclear power. But it soon became clear that the USSR would reject any international custody of fissile material if the US did not first agree to nuclear disarmament.

Finally, in 1957, 12 nations agreed to establish IAEA as an international entity that would encourage the development nuclear energy, provide international safeguards against misuse of nuclear technology and materials, and promote nuclear safety. Not surprisingly, for the next several decades, IAEA primarily seems to have been known as an entity that promoted nuclear power.

But in 1986, Hans Blix, a Swedish diplomat who headed IAEA from 1981 until 1997, was the first westerner to inspect the damage from the Chernobyl disaster. His visit and subsequent follow-ups led to new recommendations (but not requirements) about safety issues in nuclear reactors. While these were useful, they were not sufficient to prevent the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011, which again led critics to contend that IAEA was something of a toothless tiger.

You may also recognize Blix’s name because in 2002, he was called back from retirement to lead the UN commission assessing whether Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). While he reported that over 700 inspections found no evidence that such a program existed, the US still invaded Iraq and the Bush Administration actively tried to discredit Blix. (US forces, of course, found no evidence of WMDs but large stockpiles of chemical weapons).

And in 2005, IAEA and Mohamed ElBaradei, who succeeded Blix, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an award widely seen as a rebuke to the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq. In his Nobel speech, ElBaradei said that “more than 15 years after the end of the cold war, it is incomprehensible to many that the major nuclear weapon states operate with their arsenals on hair-trigger alert.”

ElBaradei also warned that feelings of insecurity and humiliation not only were leading a growing number of countries to launch their own bomb-development programs but also leading extremist groups to try and acquire nuclear materials. “We cannot respond to these threats by building more walls, developing bigger weapons or dispatching more troops,” he asserted. “These threats require primarily multinational cooperation.”

In addition, he observed that the world’s nations were spending over $1 trillion on armaments, less than a tenth of that on assistance to the developing parts of the world, where 850 million people suffer from hunger. Given this, he said, “it should not be a surprise then that poverty continues to breed conflict.”

Sixteen years have passed since that speech, almost 44 years have passed since some of my friends occupied the Seabrook site, and 64 years have passed since the UN issued today’s stamp. In that time, we haven’t achieved our goals and the danger continue to loom over us. Nevertheless, we press on. Why? I think it’s because, as Pete Seeger sang in “Rainbow Race,” we recognize that there’s “one blue sky above us, one ocean lapping all our shores, one earth so green and brown, who could ask for more?”

So, as Seeger sang, let’s “give it one more try.” Even if it’s a day late.

Be well, stay safe, fight for justice, and work for peace.