Loosening radiation exposure rules won’t speed up nuclear energy production.

Relaxing radiation safety standards could place women and children at higher risks of health issues

By Katy Huff, 24 Jan 26, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weaker-radiation-limits-will-not-help-nuclear-energy/

Get an x-ray, and you get a small dose of radiation to visualize your bones and body structures to help you medically. Buy a smoke detector, you’re inviting a tiny source of radiation, americium-241, into your home to keep you safe. But we don’t just take on that radiation heedlessly. Until perhaps now.

The U.S. regulates the amount of radiation people are exposed to using something called the linear no-threshold model, which says that every additional dose of ionizing radiation, however small, adds a small risk to health. It’s a simple equation that describes the relationship between dose and risk. For decades it has anchored radiation dose limits for both the public and radiation workers. But by February 23, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is expected to overhaul its regulations, potentially retiring this risk model, per a May executive order by President Donald Trump.

Why loosen this protection? Supposedly to spur nuclear energy production. The administration says that this risk model is too cautious, leading to costly conservatism in reactor design, staffing redundancies and stringency in licensing. The executive order promises that lifting it will accelerate nuclear reactor licensing while lowering the costs of providing nuclear energy to the grid.

As a nuclear energy advocate and former Department of Energy official, I want to see more nuclear energy on the grid soon. But loosening the protections of the linear no-threshold (LNT) model is not supported by current research. Some experts warn that relaxing it could especially place women and children at higher risk of damage from radiation.

The LNT model is based on the idea that exposure to any amount of radiation proportionally increases health risks, including the risk of cancer. From data on high radiation exposures, scientists extrapolate, or predict, what might happen if people are exposed to lower levels of radiation. At low doses, however, it becomes difficult to distinguish the health effects of radiation from the other environmental and lifestyle factors that can affect health. That uncertainty is why regulators rely on a cautious approach like the LNT model, and also why some people question its use.

People are willing to accept the radiation risks inherent in medicine, industry and energy because they trust that standards have been set by credible experts relying on evidence who err on the side of caution and protecting human health. Weakening regulations without new evidence would do the opposite. The last time the question of raising the public dose limit came up, the NRC said no—there wasn’t enough evidence. We must urge the NRC’s current commissioners to demand evidence and heed science over political agenda.