The Cold War legacy of regulatory risk analysis: The Atomic Energy Commission and radiation safety

From its inception in 1946 the Atomic Energy Commission pioneered the use of risk analysis as a mode of regulatory rationality and political rhetoric, yet historical treatments of risk analysis nearly always overlook the important role it played in the administration of atomic energy during the early Cold War. How this absence from history has been achieved and why it characterizes most historical accounts are the subjects of Chapter II. From there, this study goes on to develop the thesis that the advent of the atomic bomb was a world-shattering event that forced the Truman administration to choose between two novel alternatives: (1) movement towards global governance based initially on cooperative control of atomic energy or (2) unsparing pursuit of nuclear superiority. I refer to these as nuclear internationalism and nuclear nationalism, respectively. Each defined a social risk hierarchy. With the triumph of nuclear nationalism, nuclear annihilation was designated the greatest risk and a strong nuclear defense the primary means of prevention.; The AEC's mission in the 1950s consisted of the rapid development of a nuclear arsenal, continual improvements in weapons technologies, and the promotion of nuclear power. The agency developed a risk-based regulatory framework through its dominant position within the National Committee on Radiation Protection. It embraced a technocratic model of risk analysis whose articulation and application it controlled, largely in secret. It used this to undergird a public rhetoric of reassurance and risk minimization. In practice, safety officials adjusted exposure levels within often wide parameters and with considerable fluidity in order to prevent safety concerns from interfering with operations. Secrecy, the political climate of the time, and a lack of accountability enabled the agency to meld technical assessments with social value judgments in a manner reflective of nuclear nationalism's risk hierarchy. In the late fifties, during the fallout controversy, the centrality of this risk hierarchy to its radiation safety policies was publicly defended. AEC officials counterposed the health hazards of fallout to the vastly greater dangers of nuclear annihilation and Soviet domination, linking a sweeping historical narrative of global risk and national purpose with a technical regulatory discourse.