Divisions of the U.S. Government Regulating Ionizing

In the United States, no one governmental agency regulates radiation and radioactive materials. Rather, aspects of radiation regulation fall under several agencies. Some of the major agencies are listed below, although the list is not exhaustive.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC) is headed by a five-member Commission appointed by the President. The authority for the NRC comes from the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended. The NRC was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. Because of the historical development of radiation regulations, the NRC formerly only exercised control over reactors and reactor byproduct materials. Thus, naturally occurring radioactive material, radioactive materials produced in particle accelerators andmachine produced radiation fell outside the purview of the NRC.

By these acts, the NRC regulates: Special nuclear material, which is uranium-233, or uranium-235, enriched uranium, or plutonium. Source material, which is natural uranium or thorium or depleted uranium that is not suitable for use as reactor fuel. Byproduct material, which is, generally, nuclear material (other than special nuclear material) that is produced or made radioactive in a nuclear reactor. Most recently, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 extendedNRC authority to include naturally occurring and acceleratorproduced radioactive materials (NARM). Before this time, the individual States regulated NARM with a somewhat non-uniform array of regulations.