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Nuclear power will never be “beneficial”.

   December 7, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/12/07/nuclear-power-will-never-be-beneficial/

Abandoning radiation protection will further endanger vulnerable populations, writes Cindy Folkers

As its name suggests, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was created to regulate the nuclear power industry in order to protect people and the environment from the inherent dangers of that technology. As much as the NRC is currently failing to fully meet this mission, recent political maneuvers to curtail its influence threaten public health and safety even further.  

A May 23 executive order from President Trump will now transform the stated mission of NRC from safety regulator to industry enabler, and in fact, NRC mission wording has been changed to say that nuclear power “benefits” society, despite the evidence to the contrary given the often serious health impacts of all nuclear power-related operations. This mission shift has sparked alarm among experts and safety advocates who argue that abandoning core principles of radiation protection will further endanger communities, sacrifice vulnerable populations, and increase the nuclear industry’s grip on energy policy.

The slate of executive orders issued by President Trump on May 23 are designed to “fast-track everything nuclear.” Beyond Nuclear has already highlighted the many concerns posed by these orders. For example, EO 14300 – titled Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission – will weaken radiation exposure standards, posing grave risks to public health from nuclear technology. 

Among the decades of hard-won protections this executive order undermines is the scientifically supported foundation that there is no safe level of radiation exposure. The changes threaten not just U.S. regulatory integrity but global public health and environmental safety. 

Section 5(b) of EO 14300 is particularly alarming. It calls on the NRC to adopt “science-based radiation limits” and demands the NRC reconsider its longstanding reliance on the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model. But in effect, this request contradicts itself.

The LNT model targeted for “reconsideration” is the scientific basis for radiation protection standards worldwide and rests on two principles:

1. Linear risk — the risk of disease rises proportionally with the radiation dose.
2. No threshold — there is no dose so low that it poses zero risk. 

The NRC distorts the first principle by claiming that lower doses are less “effective” at damaging health than higher doses, despite studies supporting a linear model.

The NRC has ignored the second principle by allowing exposures in the first place – since all nuclear power operations release radioactivity –  while also minimizing and even dismissing  the damage this has done to health, all in service of ensuring the nuclear power industry’s continued existence.

Such allowance also keeps nuclear power in the forefront of energy choices, despite being one of the most expensive forms of energy when including upfront capital costs.

Trump’s EO demands that the NRC find a radiation exposure threshold deemed “safe,” essentially ignoring science to further suit industry needs, rather than adhering to the scientific consensus that no such threshold exists.

But this request has put the NRC in an untenable position for two reasons. First, the NRC itself reaffirmed use of the LNT model in 2022. Second, contemporary health research has confirmed that LNT already underestimates cancer risk at lower doses in about half of cases. 

These findings are particularly striking because they were based on studies of nuclear workers, a part of the adult population and predominantly male that research has shown are at less risk from radiation exposure. Therefore, these studies do not adequately reflect the heightened vulnerabilities of women, children, and pregnancy to cancer or other radiation-associated diseases.

Exposures that may appear statistically small for adult male workers can translate into devastating risks for others. By discarding LNT, regulators would not only further ignore these findings but also codify a system that accepts — even demands — more sacrificial victims of radiation exposure. 

By undermining LNT, the executive order provides industry with a regulatory green light: higher allowable exposures, fewer safety restrictions, and a streamlined licensing process for new reactors, including small modular nuclear reactors. The scientific implication is clear, and by extension so are the policy implications: every exposure, however small, carries some risk of harm. And even though the NRC tacitly recognizes this by using LNT, it still allows radiation exposures because if it didn’t, the nuclear power and weapons industry couldn’t exist. 

Even more chilling is the NRC’s stated interpretation of the EO: “This EO provides the NRC with a great opportunity to rethink its radiation protection regulatory framework to…safely enable the nation’s use of nuclear power.” But the NRC’s history with regulation shows a willingness to stretch and redefine what is “safe”, and to muddle that definition with concepts such as “permissible” and “reasonable” that form the basis of the concept of ALARA or “as low as reasonably achievable.”

Industry has a much larger say than members of the public in what constitutes reasonable, achievable, or safe. In fact, historically, such distortion of the LNT model was necessary for the nuclear power industry to continue.

We already know that any radiation exposure poses a risk, and that women, children, (girls more so) and pregnancies are more at risk than the reference man used as the basis for U.S. radiation standards. To pretend that some radiation exposure is safe is already promoting a lie. In truth, there should be no allowable exposure.

The consequences of loosening radiation protections are far-reaching. Ionizing radiation is a proven cause of cancer, genetic mutations, infertility, birth defects, and developmental harm. The impacts are not confined to immediate exposures but ripple through generations with cancers occurring in the exposed and future offspring.

Furthermore, the effects of radiation are not abstract: they manifest in communities near uranium mines, uranium enrichment plants, nuclear reactors, and radioactive waste dumps. For these populations, exposure is not a distant risk but a daily reality.

A very small radiation dose to a pregnant woman doubles her risk of having a leukemic child and living near nuclear power facilities doubles the risk of leukemia in children. Abandoning the LNT model is tantamount to legitimizing their suffering as the price of nuclear expansion.

A mistake with wind or solar may cause a temporary power loss, unlike a mistake with nuclear which has led to meltdowns with cascading catastrophic and never-ending impacts that can render entire regions uninhabitable for centuries.  Scientific evidence associates exposure to radiation from catastrophic releases with increases in birth defects, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, mental and developmental disorders, heart defects, respiratory illness, and cancers – particularly in children. This fundamental incompatibility with human fallibility means nuclear power is not aligned with who we are as human beings. A catastrophic release of radioisotopes from nuclear power leaves behind hazards that persist for millennia. 

The current trajectory of US nuclear policy represents a profound betrayal of public trust. By reorienting the NRC toward the false assumption that nuclear power is “beneficial” and that nuclear power can be enabled by further eroding the Linear No Threshold model, the Trump administration’s executive order prioritizes industry expansion, and economic and security interests over human health.

Cindy Folkers is the Radiation and Health Hazard Specialist at Beyond Nuclear.

December 9, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health