The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC): August 1, 1946

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the birth of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Less than a year after the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, transferring the development of nuclear weapons and the management of nuclear power from military to civilian control. A five-member commission was tasked with achieving the legislation's goals of "improving the public welfare, increasing the standard of living, strengthening free competition in private enterprise, and promoting world peace". Truman named David E. Lilienthal, head of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), to lead the new organization. The AEC's General Advisory Committee (GAC) was headed by Dr. Robert J. Oppenheimer, the physicist who had directed the development of the atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project.

On January 1, 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission took over a series of research facilities from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Manhattan District. Far flung complexes in places such as Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Hanford, Washington became part of the AEC's National Laboratory system. Activities included the production of fissionable materials, the manufacture and testing of atomic weapons, the design and development of nuclear reactors, and the promotion of nuclear medicine. In 1951, physicist Benedict Cassen invented the rectilinear scanner, a medical imaging device which detects y radiation from radiopharmaceuticals to render static, life-size images of organs. Using radionuclides from the AEC, medical researchers also studied the metabolic effects of surgery, tagged red blood cells, and identified brain tumors. Although the Atomic Energy Commission was a civilian agency, the Cold War often dominated its direction. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb, a copy of the Manhattan Project's "Fat Man" design. In October, the AEC's General Advisory Committee (GAC) issued a report about a more powerful weapon, the hydrogen bomb. An addendum written by Harvard President James B. Conant and signed by Robert J. Oppenheimer opposed the production of a "super bomb" which "might become a weapon of genocide". Although AEC commissioner David Lilienthal claimed that the H-bomb "would not further the common defense", he later joined physicist Edwin Teller and AEC commissioners Gordon Dean and Lewis Strauss in endorsing the "Super". In 1953, the United States charged Oppenheimer with communist sympathies and possible treason. Although an AEC board cleared Oppenheimer of disloyalty, the commission revoked his security clearance on June 29, 1954.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 upheld the AEC's mandate, but modified its mission, assigning the agency the goals of encouraging the use of nuclear power while regulating its safety. During the 1960s, the AEC promoted the rapid construction of nuclear reactors, often over the technical objections of scientists from the national laboratories. An independent panel, the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), often disagreed with the AEC over matters such as the containment of loss-of-coolant accidents (LOCA). According to Robert Pool, author of Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology, the head of the AEC's Division of Reactor Development and Technology, Milton Shaw, believed that "safety research was reaching the point of diminishing returns". During public hearings in 1972 and 1973, however, Shaw was "embarrassed" by the testimony of engineers from the national laboratories who claimed that their concerns about safety had been ignored.

In 1974, Congress abolished the Atomic Energy Commission and separated the regulation and promotion of nuclear power. The Energy Reorganization Act moved the AEC's regulatory functions to a new agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The AEC's promotional functions were moved to the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), an existing agency that was later absorbed by the Department of Energy (DOE).

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Energy_Commiss ion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer
http://www.osti.gov/atomicenergyact.pdf
http://www.bartleby.com/65/at/AtomicEnCom.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/united-states-atomic- energy-commission
http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/achre/intro_4.h tml
http://www.lanl.gov/history/postwar/debate.shtml
http://www.ch.doe.gov/html/site_info/atomic_energy .htm
http://history.enotes.com/peoples-chronology/year- 1953
http://history.enotes.com/peoples-chronology/year- 1954
http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/content/full/214 /3/623
http://www.commercemarketplace.com/home/nottmarket ing/History.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reac tion/readings/search.html