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| Long title | An Act to authorize the Secretary of Energy to enter into cooperative agreements with certain States respecting residual radioactive material at existing sites, to provide for the regulation of uranium mill tailings under theAtomic Energy Act of 1954, and for other purposes. |
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| Acronyms(colloquial) | UMTRCA |
| Nicknames | Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978 |
| Enacted by | the95th United States Congress |
| Effective | November 8, 1978 |
| Citations | |
| Public law | 95-604 |
| Statutes at Large | 92 Stat. 3021 |
| Codification | |
| Titles amended | 42 U.S.C.: Public Health and Social Welfare |
| U.S.C. sections created | 42 U.S.C. ch. 88 § 7901et seq. |
| Legislative history | |
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| Major amendments | |
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TheUranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act (1978) is aUnited States environmental law that amended theAtomic Energy Act of 1954 and authorized theEnvironmental Protection Agency to establish health and environmental standards for the stabilization,restoration, and disposal ofuranium mill waste. Title 1 of the Act required the EPA to set environmental protection standards consistent with theResource Conservation and Recovery Act, includinggroundwater protection limits; theDepartment of Energy to implement EPA standards and provide perpetual care for some sites; and theNuclear Regulatory Commission to review cleanups and license sites to states or the DOE for perpetual care.[1] Title 1 established a uranium mill remedial action program jointly funded by the federal government and the state.[2] Title 1 of the Act also designated 22 inactive uranium mill sites forremediation, resulting in the containment of 40 millioncubic yards of low-levelradioactive material in UMTRCA Title 1 holding cells.[3]
The act was written in the "hectic final days" of the 95th U.S. Congress and contained multiple errors that made it "a nightmare ofstatutory construction," and required remedial legislation to fix.[4] The act perpetuated the "Agreement State" program, established in 1959, in which theAtomic Energy Commission gave regulatory authority of certain nuclear materials to states.[5] It was unclear how much regulatory power Agreement states had, and as a result these states took little regulatory action. Sites that were owned by the federal government, the NRC, or Agreement states were ineligible for remedial action under the UMTRCA, as they were instead the responsibility of the government agencies or states who owned them.[6]
