Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards

Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards— Three-member panels established by Congress in 1962 to conduct hearings and make decisions on issuing reactor licenses. The boards were appointed by the Commission, which retained authority to review and overrule their licensing decisions. 

Amendment to the 1954 Atomic Energy Act created Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards to hold hearings in reactorlicensing cases. 

Summary notes of meeting with Atomic Safety Licensing panel members, 26 Nov. 1962, 0 M-7 (Atomic Safety and Licensing Boards), AEC/DOE. 

On October 1, 1976, a news item was published in the New York Times regarding the decision of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeals Board to stop construction indefinitely on a 6,000,000 nuclear center in Seabrook, New Hampshire, due to unsatisfactory answers to questions about the disposal of nuclear wastes. On October 9, in the same newspaper, it was reported that a fourth-year physics student at Princeton had designed an atomic bomb costing about 2,000 to build. The student pointed out that any physics major who pays attention to his teachers can design and build an atomic bomb if he can get the necessary materials. The bomb designed by this student is one-third the strength of the Hiroshima bomb exploded at the end of World War II. 

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