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Atomic Energy Commission

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was established by Congress in 1946, transferring control of the development of atomic science from the military to civilian hands after World War II. The AEC was emblematic of the postwar American notion—best articulated in President Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 “Atoms for Peace” speech—that while atomic weapons had ended the largest war in the country's history, atomic energy was the key to the promotion of world peace, public welfare, and a free marketplace. While the AEC regulated nuclear technology, it did so with the aims of encouraging its development, at least in the United States. It was eventually supplanted by the Energy Research and Development Administration and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), both of which were established by the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act.

Powers and Authority

The AEC was given broad regulatory powers over atomic science. The McMahon Act, which created it, explicitly prevented atomic technology transfer between the United States and foreign countries, and the act also required federal background investigations of any worker or researcher who sought access to AEC-controlled nuclear information. Employees of the AEC were exempted from the civil service system in order to give the commission greater independence, power, and flexibility in its hiring practices. All nuclear reactors and production facilities were required to be government owned, and the national laboratory system was created, building on facilities established during the war as part of the Manhattan Project.

Along with computers and the space race, nuclear technology was the most significant, prestigious, and exciting sector of scientific research in the early cold war era. The AEC's strict control over nuclear technology was vociferously criticized by free-enterprise proponents, who pointed out that the commission had exclusive jurisdiction over technology with significant social and public health implications—an important and potentially profitable technology that the private sector could only access by going through public-sector channels, which would seem to make competition difficult. Even one of the drafters of the McMahon Act referred to the AEC as “an island of socialism in the midst of a free-enterprise economy.” But he and other supporters recognized that it was necessary; a technology had been created that was too dangerous to leave unregulated, and was too new to yet know what balance of power between the public and private sectors was safe. Rather than ban the technology, which has been done or at least proposed for other potentially dangerous technologies since (e.g., human cloning), its development was encouraged under strict government oversight intended to promote and protect the public interest.

Criticisms and Reorganization

Commercial nuclear power was legalized with the Atomic Energy Act Amendments of 1954, which tasked the AEC with regulating and encouraging the nuclear power industry, much as the Federal Communications Commission was meant to do with radio and television. However, the AEC was criticized for both erring too far on the side of encouragement at the expense of safety regulations and paying far too little attention to environmental concerns. As concerns about the environment grew throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, the AEC began to seem not like an obstacle to free enterprise so much as an agency in the pocket of industry, one with little vision for considering the long-term environmental consequences of nuclear power and nuclear technology. It therefore seemed like the AEC had little concern with regulations that would prevent those consequences. This was one of the factors leading to the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act, which divided the promotional and regulatory functions of the AEC into two bodies: the Energy Research and Development Administration, which was later absorbed into the newly created Department of Energy in 1977, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

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