State-federal interactions in nuclear regulation

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 established, and later Congressional amendments have confirmed, that except in areas which have been explicitly granted to the states, the federal government possesses preemptive authority to regulate radiation hazards associated with the development and use of atomic energy. Since the passage of the original Act, numerous decisions by the courts have reaffirmed the legitimacy of federal preemption, and have defined and redefined its scope. In this study, the aim is to explore the underlying issues involved in federal preemption of radiation-hazard regulation, and to recommend actions that the Department of Energy and other agencies and groups should consider undertaking in the near term to protect the preemption principle. Appropriate roles of the states are discussed, as well as recent state-level activities and their rationale, and several current arenas in which state-federal conflicts about regulation of hazards are being played out. The emphasis here is on four particular arenas that are now important arenas of conflict, but the issues discussed are far broader in scope. These four arenas are: state-level moratorium activity; emergency planning for reactors; conflicts arising from state financial regulation; and inroads in federal preemption through litigation under state law.