of the Act Origins The Price-Anderson Act is named for Representative Charles Melvin Price (D-IL) and Senator Clinton Presba Anderson (D-NM), both of whom eventually chaired Congress's Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which followed the development of nuclear technology during World War II, had created a framework for operation of nuclear plants under government control. The intention of the government was to apply this technology to civilian industry, especially in using nuclear plants to generate electricity. In 1954 the Atomic Energy Act Amendments Act removed the government monopoly on operating nuclear plants by creating a licensing system for private operators. The structure of the insurance industry as it existed until 1955 was incapable of providing the extent of coverage needed to adequately address the risks of nuclear power. The "amount of insurance required could not be underwritten at the time by any single or joint company effort". A power plant, Shippingport, was eventually constructed, but electric utility executives expressed concerns about limited size of liability coverage offered by the insurance market ($60 million). A nuclear accident of privately held nuclear power appeared to be an impossible barrier since the possible magnitude of claims could bankrupt any electric utility held responsible. Nor could an insurance company offer insurance policies with limits beyond its own resources to pay. Because of these difficulties, it looked like it would be extremely unlikely that electric utilities would want to enter the nuclear power industry. The potential magnitude of worst-case accidents has been the subject of several major studies, such as WASH-740, WASH-1400, CRAC-II, and NUREG-1150. In November 2012, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) published State-of-the-Art Reactor Consequence Analyses (SOARCA), which examines potential safety failures with probabilities of "occurring more than once in a million reactor years, or more than once in ten million reactor years for accidents that may bypass containment features". To address these issues, Congress introduced the Price-Anderson Act in 1957. The Act required companies to obtain the maximum possible insurance coverage against accidents, determined to be $60 million, and provided a further government commitment of $500 million to cover any claims in excess of the private insurance. Companies were relieved of any liability beyond the insured amount for any incident involving radiation or radioactive releases regardless of fault or cause. The act was intended to be temporary, and to expire in August 1967 as it was