"Atoms for Peace" was the title of a speech delivered by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly in New York City on December 8, 1953.

I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is newone which I, who have spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use.

That new language is the language of atomic warfare.

The United States then launched an "Atoms for Peace" program that supplied equipment and information to schools, hospitals, and research institutions within the U.S. and throughout the world. The first nuclear reactors in Israel and Pakistan in Islamabad were built under the program by American Machine and Foundry, a company more commonly known as a major manufacturer of bowling equipment.

NS Savannah was the first nuclear-powered merchant ship. She was built in the late 1950s at a cost of $46.9 million (including a $28.3 million nuclear reactor and fuel core) and launched on July 21, 1959. She was funded by United States government agencies. Savannah was a demonstration project for the potential use of nuclear energy. The ship was named after SS Savannah, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic ocean. She was in service between 1962 and 1972 as one of only four nuclear-powered cargo ships ever built. (Soviet ice-breaker Lenin launched on December 5, 1957, was the first nuclear-powered civil ship.)

Savannah was deactivated in 1971 and after several moves has been moored at Pier 13 of the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore, Maryland, since 2008.