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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“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)
“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)
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