Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 to assume the regulatory duties of the
Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which the law abolished.The AEC had become the target of sharp criticism in the public debate over the safety of commercial
nuclear power, partly because it had a statutory mandate both to regulate and to promote the nuclear industry. The NRC's responsibilities were limited to regulating the safety of nuclear power and other civilian applications of nuclear energy.
The NRC, headed by five commissioners appointed by the president of United States, began operations in January 1975. Most of its staff members were holdovers from the AEC, but the new agency hoped to dispel the widespread public suspicion of the AEC by demonstrating its toughness as a regulator. This proved difficult, if not impossible. As the public debate over nuclear‐power safety raged on, former critics of the AEC were not inclined to regard the NRC more charitably. The NRC's efforts to overcome these suspicions were hampered by a serious fire at an Alabama nuclear‐power plant in 1975, highly publicized allegations that the NRC's radiation‐protection regulations and reactor‐safety requirements were too lax, and growing concern about
nuclear weapons proliferation.
In March 1979, the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in the United States occurred at Unit 2 of the
Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A series of mechanical failures and human errors uncovered the core of the reactor and melted about half of it. The plant suffered irreparable damage, and the credibility of the nuclear industry and the NRC fared almost as badly. Although very little radiation escaped into the environment, the accident intensified doubts about nuclear‐power safety and seriously undermined public support for the technology.
In the aftermath of Three Mile Island, the NRC devoted increased attention to a number of issues that the accident highlighted. These included ways in which a series of minor failures could lead to a major accident, the need for improved operator training, better means to assess the probability of reactor accidents, and upgraded emergency preparedness and planning. In the absence of orders for new plants, the agency allocated more of its resources to regulating the safety of existing plants, setting standards for the decommissioning of closed plants, and evaluating the complex and politically sensitive issue of the disposal of radioactive waste materials.
See also
Antinuclear Protest Movements;
Environmentalism;
Federal Government, Executive Branch: Other Departments (Department of Energy).
Bibliography
David Okrent , Nuclear Reactor Safety: On the History of the Regulatory Process, 1981.
J. Samuel Walker , A Short History of Nuclear Regulation, 1946–1990, 1993.
J. Samuel Walker
