\ Toward the Department of Energy The energy crisis, meanwhile, overtook the Atomic Energy Camission. President Gerald R. Ford signed the Energy Reorganization Act of | 1974 on October 11, abolishing the Atcmic nergy Commission and trans- ferring its nuclear weapon program to the newly formed Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). Because the Energy Research and Development Administration's primary purpose was to develop new sources of energy Congress questioned whether nuclear weapon programs should be assigned to the agency. After a year of study, ERDA and the Department of Defense recommended that ERDA should retain the weapon program. One comelLing reason for leaving the weapon program in the civilian energy agency was that the weapon laboratories also had important energy research capabilities.” The continuing arms control negotiations had far more impact on the weapon program than energy reorganization. The United States signed the Threshold Test Ban Treaty which prohibited underground tests with yields exceeding 150 kilotons and specified that nuclear weapon tests must be confined to specific test sites. The United States agreed to use national technical means to verify compliance with the treaty and henceforth conducted weapon testing programs in compliance with it. The United States also signéd a campanion to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty, the Treaty on Underground Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes on May 28, 1976. The treaty on peaceful explosions defined certain activities which did not constitute peaceful nuclear-explosions and applied to all nuclear explosions conducted outside specified weapon testing grounds. The Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty also limited all underground test shots to 150 kilotens. °°