42 U.S.C. § 7901
Section 7901 · Congressional findings and purposes
This is the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 20 court decisions — leading case Atlas Corp. v. United States (1990)
Most recently applied in El Paso Natural Gas Co. v. United States (May 2019)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
(a) The Congress finds that uranium mill tailings located at active and inactive mill operations may pose a potential and significant radiation health hazard to the public, and that the protection of the public health, safety, and welfare and the regulation of interstate commerce require that every reasonable effort be made to provide for the stabilization, disposal, and control in a safe and environmentally sound manner of such tailings in order to prevent or minimize radon diffusion into the environment and to prevent or minimize other environmental hazards from such tailings.
(b) The purposes of this chapter are to provide—
(1) in cooperation with the interested States, Indian tribes, and the persons who own or control inactive mill tailings sites, a program of assessment and remedial action at such sites, including, where appropriate, the reprocessing of tailings to extract residual uranium and other mineral values where practicable, in order to stabilize and control such tailings in a safe and environmentally sound manner and to minimize or eliminate radiation health hazards to the public, and
(2) a program to regulate mill tailings during uranium or thorium ore processing at active mill operations and after termination of such operations in order to stabilize and control such tailings in a safe and environmentally sound manner and to minimize or eliminate radiation health hazards to the public.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
References in Text
This chapter, referred to in subsec. (b), was in the original “this Act”, meaning Pub. L. 95–604, Nov. 8, 1978, 92 Stat. 3021, as amended, known as the Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see Short Title note below and Tables.
Short Title of 1988 Amendment
Pub. L. 100–616, §1, Nov. 5, 1988, 102 Stat. 3192, provided: “That this Act [amending sections 7916 and 7922 of this title] may be cited as the ‘Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Amendments Act of 1988’.”
Short Title
Section 1 of Pub. L. 95–604 provided that: “This Act [enacting this chapter and sections 2022, 2113, and 2114 of this title, amending sections 2014, 2021, 2111, and 2201 of this title, and enacting provisions set out as notes under sections 2014, 2021, and 2113 of this title] may be cited as the ‘Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation Control Act of 1978’.”
Cross References
Regulation of uranium mill tailings at active mill operations, see sections 2113 and 2114 of this title.