Abstract
[Excerpt] On October 11, 1974, President Gerald Ford signed the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 (ERA), which separated the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) into two new agencies, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). ERDA and the NRC began operations on January 19, 1975. On October 1, 1977, ERDA was one of three agencies merged into the new U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This history provides the first detailed account of the passage of the ERA and the challenges the NRC and ERDA/DOE faced in implementing the law. The story concludes in the early 1980s when the NRC and the DOE survived efforts to dismantle them.