In creating the AEC, Congress declared that atomic energy should be employed not only in the form of
nuclear weapons for the nation's defense, but also to promote world
peace, improve the public welfare and strengthen free competition in private enterprise. At the same time, the
McMahon Act which created the AEC also gave it unprecedented powers of regulation over the entire field of nuclear science and technology. It furthermore explicitly prevented
technology transfer between the United States and other countries, and required
FBI investigations for all scientists or industrial contractors who wished to have access to any AEC controlled nuclear information. The signing was the culmination of long months of intensive debate among politicians, military planners and atomic scientists over the fate of this new energy source and the means by which it would be regulated. President Truman appointed
David Lilienthal as the first Chairman of the AEC. On 11 March 1948 Lilienthal and
Kenneth Nichols were summoned to the White House where Truman told them "I know you two hate each other's guts". He directed that "the primary objective of the AEC was to develop and produce atomic weapons", Nichols was appointed a major general and replaced
Leslie Groves as chief of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP); previously Lilienthal had opposed his appointment. Lilienthal was told to "forgo your desire to place a bottle of milk on every doorstop and get down to the business of producing atomic weapons." Nichols became General Manager of the AEC on 2 November 1953. The AEC was in charge of developing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, taking over these responsibilities from the wartime
Manhattan Project. In its first decade, the AEC oversaw the operation of
Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, devoted primarily to weapons development, and in 1952, the creation of new second weapons laboratory in California, the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The AEC also carried out the "crash program" to develop the
hydrogen bomb (H-bomb), and the AEC played a key role in the prosecution of the
Rosenbergs for espionage. The AEC also began a program of regular
nuclear weapons testing, both in the faraway
Pacific Proving Grounds and at the
Nevada Test Site in the western United States. While the AEC also supported much basic research, the vast majority of its early budget was devoted to
nuclear weapons development and production. After serving as director of the
Manhattan Project's
Los Alamos Laboratory, physicist
J. Robert Oppenheimer voiced strong opinions to the AEC, as chairman of its general advisory board of nuclear scientists, against development of the "super" or
hydrogen bomb along with Lilienthal. Subsequently, Lilienthal left the AEC at the White House's request in 1950 and Oppenheimer's appointment to the board was not renewed in 1952. With them removed, President Truman announced his decision to develop and produce the hydrogen bomb. The first test firing of an experimental H-bomb ("
Ivy Mike") was carried out in the
Central Pacific on November 1, 1952, under President Truman. Furthermore,
U.S. Navy Admiral
Lewis W. Strauss was appointed in 1953 by the new
President Eisenhower as the Chairman of the AEC, to carry out the military development and production of the H-bomb. Lilienthal wanted to give high priority to peaceful uses, especially with
nuclear power plants. However, coal was still cheap, and the
electric power industry was not interested. The first experimental nuclear power plant
Shippingport began operation in Pennsylvania under President Eisenhower in 1954.
Domestic uranium procurement program The AEC developed a program for sourcing uranium domestically. Before 1947, the main sources for the mineral had been Canada and (what was then) the Belgian Congo, though the Manhattan Project also secretly processed uranium from the tailings of vanadium plants in the US West during World War II. The Colorado Plateau was known to contain veins of carnotite ore, which contains both vanadium and uranium. The AEC developed its program in accordance with the principle of free enterprise. Rather than discovering, mining, and processing the ore itself, the federal government provided geological information, built roads, and set a fixed rate for purchasing ore through one of the mills in the area. This prompted individuals to discover and produce the ore, which the government would then buy. The AEC was the only legal buyer of uranium from the beginning of the program in 1947 through 1966. From 1966 to the end of the program in 1970, the AEC continued to buy uranium to support the market until private industry could develop sufficiently. Because the government itself was not producing ore, it claimed that it had no obligation to regulate miner safety. A congressional report published in 1995 concluded that, "The government failed to act to require the reduction of the hazard by ventilating the mines, and it failed to adequately warn the miners of the hazard to which they were being exposed." The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 sought to compensate miners and families who developed cancer as a result of exposure to radon gas in uranium mines.
Regulations and experiments The AEC was connected with the
U.S. Department of Defense by a "Military Liaison Committee"'. The
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy exercised congressional oversight over the AEC and had considerable power in influencing AEC decisions and policy. The AEC's far-reaching powers and control over a subject matter which had far-reaching social, public health, and military implications made it an extremely controversial organization. One of the drafters of the McMahon Act,
James R. Newman, famously concluded that the bill made "the field of atomic energy [an] island of socialism in the midst of a free-enterprise economy". Before the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created, nuclear regulation was the responsibility of the AEC, which Congress first established in the
Atomic Energy Act of 1946. Eight years later, Congress replaced that law with the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which for the first time made the development of commercial
nuclear power possible, and resolved a number of other outstanding problems in implementing the first Atomic Energy Act. The act assigned the AEC the functions of both encouraging the use of nuclear power and regulating its
safety. The AEC's regulatory programs sought to ensure public health and safety from the hazards of nuclear power without imposing excessive requirements that would inhibit the growth of the industry. This was a difficult goal to achieve, especially in a new industry, and within a short time the AEC's programs stirred considerable controversy.
Stephanie Cooke has written that: the AEC had become an oligarchy controlling all facets of the military and civilian sides of nuclear energy, promoting them and at the same time attempting to regulate them, and it had fallen down on the regulatory side ... a growing legion of critics saw too many inbuilt conflicts of interest. The AEC had a history of involvement in experiments involving
radioactive iodine. In a 1949 operation called the "
Green Run", the AEC released
iodine-131 and
xenon-133 to the atmosphere which contaminated a area containing three small towns near the
Hanford site in Washington. In 1953, the AEC ran several studies on the health effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women at the
University of Iowa. Also in 1953, the AEC sponsored a study to discover if radioactive iodine affected
premature babies differently from full-term babies. In the experiment, researchers from Harper Hospital in Detroit orally administered iodine-131 to 65 premature and full-term infants who weighed from . Under the Nixon Administration, environmental consciousness expanded, and the first
Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. In 1973, the AEC predicted that, by the turn of the century, one thousand reactors would be needed producing electricity for homes and businesses across the United States. However, after 1973, orders for nuclear reactors declined sharply as electricity demand fell and construction costs rose. Some partially completed nuclear power plants in the U.S. were stricken, and many planned nuclear plants were canceled. Lasting through the mid-1970s, the AEC, along with other entities including the Department of Defense, National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, the Manhattan Project, and various universities funded or conducted
human radiation experiments. The government covered up most of these radiation mishaps until 1993, when
President Bill Clinton ordered a change of policy.
Nuclear radiation was known to be dangerous and deadly (from the atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945), and the experiments were designed to ascertain the detailed effect of radiation on human health. In Oregon, 67 prisoners with inadequate consent to vasectomies had their testicles exposed to irradiation. In Chicago, 102 volunteers with unclear consent received injections of strontium and cesium solutions to simulate radioactive fallout. ==AEC Chairs==