What can be learned about "Peaceful Nuclear Explosions' from IAEA sources?

What can we learn about 'peaceful nuclear explosions' from IAEA sources? Frankly, though the sources are rich, the scope of this question is rather large: many players and influences perform upon this ten year stage, from roughly 1967 to 1977, so in my work I have adopted a special emphasis on relationships between India and Pakistan and PNEs at the IAEA. This ten year period could be considered the 'high season' of PNEs. I am tracking the views and positions concerning PNEs, seen in IAEA documents, of Member States which had the greater nuclear relationships with South Asia (e.g. Canada, the UK, the US, USSR, France), as well as the views and actions of the 'non-aligned nations' emerging as a group about 1967. As a result of this emphasis some important dimensions of the Agency's other work do not appear here, but it is possible to see the disagreements about definitions of what a PNE would be, the ways in which PNEs arrived on the agenda of the Agency in 1967-68, the interplay and tension with other institutions (including within the UN family), the relation of the nuclear states to the NPT debates, etc. All of this was important to the nuclear powers in the run up to the NPT's 'entry into force' in March 1970. The IAEA sources on the PNE meetings in 1971, 1972 and 1974 are very useful, though only a sharp and careful reader would catch the choppy issues in the calm lake of Agency language in these documents; though there is nothing 'explosive' in here, these documents are nevertheless important because this is the working frontier between the benign and the lethal part of the nuclear business, the civil and the military, the peaceful and the dangerous. The debate slides back and forth across these charged polarities. The effects at the Agency of the May 1974 nuclear test in the Rajasthan desert are particularly considered, because the larger consequences of that small underground test in India for the 'nuclear system' are profound. I am asking how much the expansion of the safeguard inspection system is allied with and energized by the PNE negotiations, particularly after May1974. How did that test inspire the creation and evolution of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group in London? I also think it is interesting to ask what kinds of intelligence, if any, the DG's office had access to about preparations for the 1974 test in India. I will explore these consequences down to the official end of PNE debates, found in the 1977 Ad Hoc Advisory Group's report to the IAEA Board of Governors, although there were further PNE studies released through to 1980. Because I am also tracking other nuclear negotiations, based not only on IAEA sources but also on sources in archives elsewhere (e.g. heavy water, uranium, reprocessing, reactors, safeguards, etc.). I do not intend at this time to try to complete a comprehensive history of all PNE negotiations. But it is gratifying to see how much can be learned by following even this limited path. This essay is a part of a larger study called 'Negotiating Nuclear Power' supported by a grant awarded to me by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The very courteous and knowledgeable assistance of the archivist and staff at the IAEA during my visits in 2011 and 2012 has been a great encouragement in this work, and I am grateful for it. (author)