It is difficult to conceive how the carefully meticulous civilian reactor licensing process outlined above could be prostituted — even by a most venal aec — to ends other than those of the safety of individuals and the public at large. It is difficult to argue with success, and the aec’s regulatory and licensing responsibilities have been discharged with outstanding success. No one has ever been injured because of an accident or from radiological discharges from a licensed reactor — either a power reactor or a research reactor. It seems to me that when one advocates scrapping a system that is effective, there must be a proved alternative to substitute for it.

Obviously, if the system is deemed unsatisfactory, some or all of the regu­latory and licensing authority now held by aec would have to be transferred to some other agency — either an existing agency or a new agency to be created for that purpose. There is little doubt that the legal authority for the President to make such a transfer exists under present provisions of the Reorganization Act of 1949. Whether the transfer of regulatory authority be to an existing agency such as the Federal Power Commission or to a newly created regula­tory agency, the primary factors to be weighed are the same.

Perhaps the most significant would be the physical and organizational separation of the people charged with regulatory responsibility from those responsible for the research and development. It must be understood that in a highly technical field, development and safety are not two separate goals. There can be no development without safety and no safety without a thorough under­standing of each step in the development of whatever is to be made safe. And certainly the safety requirements won’t be realistic about the burden imposed on an industry and still conservative from the point of view of public health and safety without thorough technical competence in the regulatory staff. Lack of sufficient research could result in inadequate technical training which in turn could well lead to an overly conservative attitude in regulation. The net effect would be an unnecessary brake on industrial development.

These realities lead to the inescapable conclusion that separation would necessitate a safety research program in the successor regulatory agency, for no existing agency other than the aec has the expertise necessary to perform the regulatory function satisfactorily. The impact on an already strained budg­et of duplicate research programs is obvious. Moreover, it is not at all un­likely that a new regulatory agency would have considerable difficulty attract­ing qualified technical personnel to either research or regulatory positions in an agency with no developmental responsibility. When one considers the gen­eral shortage of such qualified people, this difficulty becomes even more ob­vious.

A natural reply to this position is the question, Why must separation of the regulatory function from aec preclude communication between the new regulatory group and the research and development people at aec? It should not, but the realities are that it will. The idealistic credo that all agencies are part of the same government and therefore cooperate fully simply does not exist as a matter of practicality. Interagency communications are at best some­what more formalized than the internal communications within any particular agency. Thus, this separation of regulatory personnel would upset the balanced and coordinated efforts between regulatory, developmental, and operational functions of the government as applied to the atomic energy industry by the aec under the present system. At its worst, such separation could result in the isolation of the regulatory staff from the research and development and the operating personnel engaged in safety aspects of the nuclear industry.

Among the critical comments heard regarding the aec’s regulatory pro­gram are those which assert the existence of too much red tape, too much de­lay, insufficient standards and codes, and a general lack of a streamlined, com­mercially oriented regulatory program. Without either agreeing to those or defending against them, let me merely ask, Would the situation be improved by injection into the process of an additional agency? I can’t help concluding that some of the problems in licensing and regulation experienced today would only be magnified.

One of the bizarre results of transferring regulatory responsibility from the aec would be that all aec facilities performing research and development functions would probably become subject to the regulatory authority of the new agency. This would create a circuitous condition wherein the agency de­veloping the technology and providing the expertise upon which a regulatory agency would draw would be subject to compliance with the regulatory agen­cy’s rules and regulations, which in turn must be created only after a thorough understanding of the technology being developed. This to me hardly seems the ideal situation for an efficient governmental function. Federal agencies are notoriously jealous of jurisdictional infringement, and this situation is a nat­ural for continuous conflict.

This is not to say that the aec in its own operation should be exempt from safety regulation. The only alternative is to develop an in-house procedure for safety review by the research and development group. This would com­pound the personnel problem — we would then have two research and devel­opment groups, one to develop the technology and one to train the regulators, and two regulatory groups, one to regulate the industry and one to regulate the developers.

I am sure these comments will not satisfy the critics who condemn the existence of both regulatory and developmental responsibility in one agency. Nevertheless, the problems I have outlined which would result from separation of these functions have essentially been avoided, while at the same time there has been a considerable degree of in-house separation of the regulatory staff of the Director of Regulation from the developmental and, if you insist, pro­motional staff under the General Manager. This organizational separation per­mits essentially independent efforts but does not erect barriers to cross-fertiliza­tion by ideas and suggestions for improvement of one program or the other.

In the civilian nuclear power program, other procedures have been estab­lished to assure the independence of those reviewing applications of power plants who must assure the public health and safety. The Joint Committee rec­ommended and Congress enacted in 1957 provisions that the acrs be a sep­arate statutory body whose advice and reports are a matter of public record.

More recently, the aec has established an Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board to which the aec is delegating responsibility concerning certain licensing proceedings and also concerning proceedings relative to licenses or authoriza­tions for facilities in which the aec has a direct financial interest. As has been related, both of these groups, the acrs and the Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board, are comprised of experts who, though compensated for their services by the aec, are generally not government employees but rather are independent experts acting as consultants.

The entire history of the development of the present regulatory system demonstrates an awareness of the potential problems associated with one agen­cy’s being responsible for all aspects of a new and growing technology. It was for this reason that in 1957 the aec abolished the Division of Civilian Applica­tion and established a new Division of Licensing and Regulation which was responsible for regulatory functions only. The “promotional” functions were transferred to various other divisions. In 1959, the aec established the office of Assistant General Manager for Regulation and Safety. This officer became responsible for the activities of the Division of Licensing and Regulation as well as two new units — the Division of Compliance and the Office of Health and Safety. The functions of these new units were implemented by mid-1960, by which time all regulatory functions were under the direction of the Assis­tant General Manager.

Following the exhaustive review of the entire regulatory process by both the aec and the Joint Committee in 1961, there was a further separation of the regulatory functions, removing them from the General Manager’s organ­izational responsibility by establishing the office of Director of Regulation, which reported directly to the commissioners. Thus, all aspects of the aec’s responsibility for protection of public health and safety — licensing, regulation, compliance, inspection, and enforcement — became the responsibility of a sep­arate internal organization responsible directly to the commissioners and func­tioning independently but with complete access to and cooperation from the developmental organizations of the aec, its laboratories, and its contractors.

I must add that neither the arguments of the critics nor the responses I have made are new or original. These are essentially the same arguments that were thoroughly considered in 1961 by the Joint Committee. The Committee staff compiled a comprehensive report printed as Volume 1 of Improving the AEC Regulatory Process in March of that year. Volume 2 is an appendix of pertinent data bearing on these questions. Hearings were held in June 1961 and are printed under the title Radiation Safety and Regulation. Nor has the matter been laid to rest during the intervening years, for it has frequently been considered by the Joint Committee.

During the Joint Committee’s hearing on licensing and regulation of nu­clear reactors held in 1967, I asked about the possible conflict between the responsibility for regulation and the responsibility for promotion of the nuclear industry and the possible detrimental effect on full and complete discharge of the aec’s duty to ensure public safety. Chairman Seaborg replied: “I think that it has worked, so far as my experience is concerned, quite well, with a minimum of that kind of interference in regulatory decisions. This combina­tion of the two responsibilities in one agency has the very much compensating advantage that you have the expertise that is required in your organization in order to discharge the regulatory responsibilities adequately and this is very important in a new and growing technology like this. That is why we think that the time is not yet right for the separation of the responsibility, and that this advantage far outweighs any potential disadvantage from a possible bias that might be introduced due to the dual responsibility.” (Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Licensing and Regulation of Nuclear Reactors, hearings April-May 1967, pp. 7-8.)

The significant factor is that this matter is continually under review. The responsible officials do not assert that future developments will not warrant a separation of functions as is advocated by some of the critics of the present system, but they do assert that the present state of the industry indicates that now is not the time. Perhaps when this technology becomes more common­place and when there is a surfeit of qualified technical personnel, such an or­ganizational change will be in order. However, the time is not yet ripe. The matter will continue to receive careful consideration.