The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (McMahon Act) determined how the United States federal government would control and manage the nuclear technology it had jointly developed with its wartime allies (Britain and Canada). Most significantly, the Act ruled that nuclear weapon development and nuclear power management would be under civilian, rather than military control, and it established the United States Atomic Energy Commission for this purpose. It was sponsored by Senator Brien McMahon, a Democrat from Connecticut, who chaired the United States Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, and whose hearings in late 1945 and early 1946 led to the fine tuning and passing of the Act.
The Senate passed the Act unanimously through voice vote. It passed the House of Representatives 265–79. It was signed by President Harry Truman on August 1, 1946 and it went into effect on January 1, 1947.
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Famous quotes containing the words atomic energy, atomic, energy and/or act:
“The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“Other centuries had their driving forces. What will ours have been when men look far back to it one day? Maybe it won’t be the American Century, after all. Or the Russian Century or the Atomic Century. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, Phil, if it turned out to be everybody’s century, when people all over the world—free people—found a way to live together? I’d like to be around to see some of that, even the beginning.”
—Moss Hart (1904–1961)
“While the State becomes inflated and hypertrophied in order to obtain a firm enough grip upon individuals, but without succeeding, the latter, without mutual relationships, tumble over one another like so many liquid molecules, encountering no central energy to retain, fix and organize them.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)
“There is a distinction to be drawn between true collectors and accumulators. Collectors are discriminating; accumulators act at random. The Collyer brothers, who died among the tons of newspapers and trash with which they filled every cubic foot of their house so that they could scarcely move, were a classic example of accumulators, but there are many of us whose houses are filled with all manner of things that we “can’t bear to throw away.””
—Russell Lynes (1910–1991)