Atomic Energy Act of 1946

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Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946.

The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, informally known as the McMahon Act, determined how the United States government would control and manage the nuclear technology it had developed. Most significantly it ruled that nuclear weapon development and nuclear power management would be under civilian, rather than military, control, and established the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for this purpose. It was sponsored by Senator Brien McMahon, a Democrat from Connecticut, the chair of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy whose hearings lead to the fine-tuning and passing of the Act.

The Act passed through both houses of Congress and was signed by President Harry Truman on August 1, 1946 and it went into effect on January 1, 1947.

One of the provisions of the Act was a strict ban on the release of atomic technology to other powers, even to allies. This served to galvanize countries such as the United Kingdom, which had supplied personnel and information to the Manhattan Project team into constructing their own nuclear weapons.

The provisions of the Act were substantially modified by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.