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Nuclear Kills Kids – by Tony Webb

Tony Webb,, April 2025, https://www.fabians.org.au/nuclear_kills_kids

One moment from my work in the USA in the early 1980s stands out in my memory.  I’d driven from Chicago to Cleveland at the invitation of the Health and Safety Officer of the US Boilermakers Union. The purpose was to speak to the members meeting held on the night ahead of the recruitment of members for work on the annual ‘clean-up’ of the local Nuclear Power plant.  The hired workers would be ‘radiation sponges’ – short-term casuals recruited for the ‘dirty jobs’ that would result in significant radiation exposures sometimes up to the permitted annual exposure limit and ‘let go’ if they reached that limit.  The practice offered some protection to the company’s full -time employees whose skills would be needed on an ongoing basis and whose exposures needed to be kept below the limit.   The meeting was well attended , rowdy, with a lot of questions and discussion which spilled over into the carpark after the meeting closed.  I noticed one man hanging back from the circle and invited him to join and share his thoughts.  As I recall them the essence was:

“I will be going in to apply for work tomorrow.  I understand what you shared about the risks . . . no safe level of exposure and chance of getting cancer perhaps 20 years from now . . .  It will put a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table . . . BUT my wife and I have had all the family we want.  If we hadn’t, what you shared about the genetic risks, the damage to our children and future generations . . . no I wouldn’t be going . . . “

It is a sad fact that workers, both men and women will choose, often from necessity, to put their health at risk from the work environment. What is however consistent in my experience of working on radiation and other occupational health and safety issues is that they are far more concerned, cautious and likely to prioritise safety when it comes to risks to their children.

We now have solid evidence(1) that workers in nuclear power plants routinely exposed to radiation face significantly increased cancer risks, risks of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes, dementia and potentially other health effects. There is also an increased risk of genetic damage that can be passed on to their children and future generations. But perhaps most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.

To put it simply and in language that will resonate with workers and their families in the communities around the seven nuclear power plant sites the federal Liberal-National Coalition proposes to build if elected to government, nuclear kills kids.  It matters little whether or not these nuclear plants can be built on time, within budget, make a contribution to climate change, reduce electricity prices, or secure a long-term energy future; these nuclear power plants will likely kill kids who live close by. They cannot operate without routine releases of radioactive material into the environment and our young will be exposed and are particularly susceptible to any exposure that results.

Now add to that if you care that women are more susceptible than men; that workers in these plants face greater exposure and health risks than adults in the community; that nuclear plants have and will continue to have both major accidents and less major ‘incidents’ resulting in radiation releases, community exposures and health damage. Add also that quite apart from the workers and others exposed when these plants need to be decommissioned, the radioactive wastes resulting from perhaps 30-50 years life will need to be safely stored and kept isolated from human contact for many thousands of years longer than our recorded human history.    And, again if you care, also add in the concerns around proliferation of nuclear weapons which historically has occurred on the back of, enabled by and sometimes concealed by countries’ developing so called peaceful nuclear power.

All these arguments add weight to the absurdity of Australia starting and the world continuing down this nuclear power path.  But if we want a single issue that strikes at the heart of human concerns it is this – and forgive me saying it again, it needs to be repeated many times until the electorate in Australia hears it loud and clear – Nuclear Kills Kids.

Dr Tony Webb is a Fabian and a long-time community and environmental activist. He has worked on housing, unemployment, worker cooperatives, anti-nuclear, radiation and health, food policy, and energy/climate issues in the UK USA Canada and Australia. Along the way he picked up an MSc in Energy Resources Management and a PhD in Humanities.

(1) SOURCES……………………………………………………………….

October 25, 2026 Posted by | radiation | Leave a comment

Chernobyl particles reveal unexpectedly stable nuclear fuel after 40 years

by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan October 6, 2026
https://phys.org/news/2026-10-chernobyl-particles-reveal-unexpectedly-stable.html

Four decades after the 1986 nuclear disaster, researchers at Leibniz University Hannover and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) examined six tiny, highly radioactive fragments that were released from the destroyed reactor in Ukraine in the wake of the incident. Analyses show that these “hot particles” are far more stable than had previously been assumed. The findings could allow for more precise assessments of the health risks posed by such radioactive particles. The paper is published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials.

The explosions hurled massive amounts of debris from the nuclear reactor, radioactive dust particles still contaminate the soil around the disaster area, known today as Chernobyl. Measuring only 8 to 50 micrometers, they remain highly radioactive even after 40 years. Even today, people may enter the affected areas only while wearing protective suits.

“There are three classes of these particles,” explains Tobias Weissenborn, a physicist and doctoral candidate at Leibniz University Hannover. “First, there are particles that are chemically and physically still very similar to the nuclear fuel uranium dioxide. Then, there are particles that are partially or fully encased in, or completely fused with, their zirconium layer.”

The latter type of particle formed when temperatures in the reactor spiked dramatically, melting the fuel and bonding it to its surrounding protective layer of the highly resistant metal zirconium. “The third type of particle was created when the graphite moderator caught fire,” Weissenborn adds.

The moderator’s purpose is to slow down fast neutrons and maintain the chain reaction. However, during the accident, the graphite caught fire and burned for 10 days. “In the process, the fuel oxidized into various uranium oxides”—such as U₃O₈. This mechanically unstable compound rapidly forms microscopic particles that are easily borne away by wind. Inhaling such dust particles poses severe health risks.

First-ever phase analysis of highly radioactive fragments of this kind

It remains largely unclear why these particles weather at different rates in their environment. In any case, they generate a range of different uranium oxides as they decay. Analyzing them requires highly complex synchrotron X-ray diffraction experiments. HZDR researcher and crystallographer Dr. Christoph Hennig has now carried out the first successful structural investigation of this kind at the Rossendorf Beamline in Grenoble. In collaboration with Weissenborn, he conducted a phase analysis on six of the Chernobyl particles. Among other things, this allows researchers to estimate the rate at which the particles release radioactive substances.

“The colleagues from Hanover and I used various methods to isolate the particles from Ukrainian soil samples and attach them to tungsten electrodes,” Weissenborn explains. Secured by several confinement layers, the samples were then shipped to Grenoble, where a team led by Hennig examined them using diffraction analysis—studying how X-rays are diffracted from the material’s internal structure.

“First, we had to figure out how to examine the particle structure,” Hennig explains. “Ultimately, we fully rotated the particles in an X-ray beam focused down to 100 micrometers—about the thickness of a human hair. We measured each particle from 2,000 different angles to seamlessly capture all the reflections.”

The examined particles retain radionuclides within them

Using this approach, the researchers were able to experimentally detect different oxide phases within the samples. To their surprise, they found that the crystal structure of the nuclear fuel in the examined particles has remained largely intact to this day—which means that the remnants of the accident are chemically more stable than originally assumed. The particles retain fission products within themselves—which might be good news for the soil and water around Chernobyl.

“However, every single particle has a different structure,” warns Weissenborn, “and our experiment only studied six such particles from two different locations.” Drawing more general conclusions about the stability of Chernobyl particles would require gathering samples from far more locations and examining many more particles.

“And even if we obtained some averages at some point, we still wouldn’t be able to make universal statements about health risks in the region,” Weissenborn cautions. “Because even if the particles decay in a largely uniform pattern, there will always be outliers, more persistent particles, that will release radionuclides at a later point in time.”

So, it won’t be possible to lift restrictions in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone anytime soon. However, this does not impede further research: Weissenborn and Hennig are already conducting follow-up experiments on the highly radioactive transuranic phases in the remnants of this epochal disaster.

Publication details

Tobias Weissenborn et al, X-ray diffraction phase analysis of single hot particles from Chornobyl, Journal of Hazardous Materials (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2026.141533

Journal information: Journal of Hazardous Materials

Key concepts

toxic radionuclide contaminationuranium

Provided by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centre

October 12, 2026 Posted by | radiation | Leave a comment

Hypothesis to explain child leukemias near NPPs – Rebuttal rebutted

Dr Ian Fairlie, September 30, 2026, https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/hypothesis-to-explain-child-leukemias-near-npps-rebuttal-rebutted/

Official Rebuttal of Tritium Hypothesis

It has recently come to my attention that in 2016 a rebuttal was published in an official report of my hypothesis to explain increased incidences of cancers among children residing near nuclear power plants (NPPs). The rebuttal is contained UNSCEAR (2016) Annex C: Biological Effect of Selected Internal Emitters -Tritium. Although this rebuttal was published 10 years ago, it’s the only official response to my hypothesis so it’s worth examining the matter. I shall show here that the UNSCEAR riposte has several shortcomings which render its argument unreliable. The main conclusion is that the absence of increased leukemias could be due to several naturally-occurring processes factors and does not necessarily invalidate the NPP hypothesis.

Exposures near NPPs

The estimation of radiation exposures from NPP emissions has rarely been examined in the scientific literature. One exception is Hill (1986). The difficulty is that such estimations are complex. Briefly, they require several computer models to estimate nuclide emission rates, the transport of radionuclides through the environment to man, human uptake and retention Bq models. Lastly, they require estimated dose coefficients to convert Bq to Sv. Further complexities occur with chronic rather than single exposures, and with organic binding in the case of tritium releases. The above models all require several assumptions to be made which may or may not have been validated by environmental or clinical data. Uncertainties abound in each model, which need to be multiplied and/or added together. The main conclusion of the UK Government’s CERRIE report (Cerrie, 2004) was that the resulting uncertainties could be very large.

The upshot is that official dose estimates from NPP emissions are not necessarily reliable and could be significant underestimates.

In 2010, Fairlie (2010) first published a hypothesis to explain the observed increases in childhood leukemia near NPPs. This suggested that large releases of tritium from NPPs during ~annual refuelling episodes (when reactors were depressurised) resulted in tritium plumes downwind from NPPs. Pregnant women living within ~5 km of these locations could have inhaled high concentrations of tritiated water vapour. It was further suggested that the haematopoietic tissues (including nascent bone marrow) in the developing fetuses/embryos were labelled with this tritium. These tissues are highly radiosensitive. This resulted in babies being born with pre-leukemic cells which, after birth, developed into full-blown leukemias. The product of large increases in estimated radiation dose times the estimated large increase in radiation risk explained the discrepancy between official estimates and the actual cancer increases.

This hypothesis was more fully developed and explained by the author in a longer published article (Fairlie, 2014) not cited by UNSCEAR. Many studies since then have indicated increased incidences of childhood cancers, including leukemias, among children near NPPs (Fairlie, 2024).

REBUTTAL

It appears that no dissenting or corrective articles on this hypothesis were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals in 2010, 2014 or in subsequent years. However in 2016 an UNSCEAR report was published with a scientific addendum (Annex C) on tritium (UNSCEAR, 2016). This contained a rebuttal of the author’s hypothesis. In brief, the UNSCEAR Annex stated that, if the NPP hypothesis were correct, then the large releases of tritium from the atmospheric bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s (see Figure 3.1) should have resulted in increases in leukemia deaths world-wide which were not observed (Wakeford et al, 2010). Therefore, in the view of the authors of the UNSCEAR 2016 Annex C report, the NPP hypothesis was not supported.

However the UNSCEAR explanation has several shortcomings which render its argument unreliable. One of the most obvious shortcomings is that the UNSCEAR scheme conflicts with the scientific axiom “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence” (Sagan and Druyan (1995); Altman and Bland, 1995). In other words, the mere fact that we lack evidence here for the NPP hypothesis does not warrant us to infer that the hypothesis is false.

But even if we look at the UNSCEAR argument in more detail, it does not withstand much scrutiny. The Annex C authors argue that an examination of childhood leukaemia incidence in cancer registries in three continents found no evidence of a wave of excess cases corresponding to the peak of radioactive fallout from atmospheric weapons testing (Wakeford et al, 2010). The authors then state that the absence of a “discernible” leukaemia increase following the main peak of testing (1962-63) is evidence against the NPP hypothesis. Let us examine the UNSCEAR argument in more detail.

Bomb Tests

The UNSCEAR argument juxtaposes tritium exposures from NPPs and the peak period (1961-1962) of the bomb tests – but these are substantially different in nature, size, and duration. Most important for health outcomes, their resulting tritium concentrations are likely to have been quite different.  To wit, bomb test tritium was ejected high into the Earth’s troposphere and stratosphere and was thus distributed world-wide – mostly in the northern hemisphere, mainly in 1961-1962. See Fig 3.1 below, from IAEA (2025).

But even if we look at the UNSCEAR argument in more detail, it does not withstand much scrutiny. The Annex C authors argue that an examination of childhood leukaemia incidence in cancer registries in three continents found no evidence of a wave of excess cases corresponding to the peak of radioactive fallout from atmospheric weapons testing (Wakeford et al, 2010). The authors then state that the absence of a “discernible” leukaemia increase following the main peak of testing (1962-63) is evidence against the NPP hypothesis. Let us examine the UNSCEAR argument in more detail.

Bomb Tests

The UNSCEAR argument juxtaposes tritium exposures from NPPs and the peak period (1961-1962) of the bomb tests – but these are substantially different in nature, size, and duration. Most important for health outcomes, their resulting tritium concentrations are likely to have been quite different.  To wit, bomb test tritium was ejected high into the Earth’s troposphere and stratosphere and was thus distributed world-wide – mostly in the northern hemisphere, mainly in 1961-1962. See Fig 3.1 below, from IAEA (2025).

The first is via atmospheric mixing. According to Jenkins (2001) “the detonations generally injected the tritium into the stratosphere, where it was quickly oxidized to form water vapour. Over a period of a few years, the tritiated water vapour was transferred to the troposphere, where it was rapidly ‘rained out’ to the earth’s surface. The delivery of bomb tritium to the earth’s surface was monitored by a number of World Meteorological Organization /International Atomic Energy Authority precipitation sampling stations. The pattern and timing of this delivery have been shown to consist of two primary components: a dominant northern, spike-like component, and a weaker southern component.”

The second natural process occurs by isotopic exchange between 3H and 1H. At the molecular level, atomic exchange between the two H isotopes is near instantaneous. The main point here is that the quantity of naturally-occurring hydrogen (1H) in the form of water (H2O) on Earth is very large. About 61% of the northern hemisphere is covered by oceans and seas and a further ~1% by Greenland’s ice sheet. During winter, seasonal snow and ice-covered land (including arctic tundra and boreal regions) across the northern hemisphere expand to cover about 16% to 18% of the surface area of the northern hemisphere. Therefore ~80% of the northern hemisphere is covered by forms of water – at least during winter.

Due to atmospheric mixing and isotopic exchange between 3H and the very large volumes of 1H in the oceans, seas, lakes, ice sheets, and Arctic tundra and boreal regions in the northern hemisphere, atmospheric concentrations of HTO vapour will have been reduced. This would have occurred relatively quickly.

Indeed, direct evidence of the relatively quick incorporation of atmospheric tritium into surface waters is given in figure 1 of the UNSCEAR Annex itself. This shows environmental tritium levels in surface water in the United States in 1951–1975 and is reproduced below.

This figure [on original] shows that atmospheric tritium is quickly taken up by surface waters, as their tritium concentrations mainly follow the temporal pattern of the tests shown in figure 3.1.

It is important to note that it’s tritium in atmospheric water vapour and not tritium in drinking water that would have been the main problem health-wise. This is for two reasons. First, the main uptake routes would have been via inhalation and skin absorption; and second, the main tritium sink would have been water in seas and oceans …which is not consumed as drinking water.

Source: Bennett (1973)

Another mechanism – escape of H from the stratosphere

A third natural mechanism is that some molecular3H, being much lighter than air, will have escaped from the Earth’s atmosphere in the form of hydrogen gas, shortly after the explosions.

It is not possible at this point to estimate the magnitudes of the reductions in tritium’s air concentrations due to these three natural processes. But they could be significant – leading to a paucity of observations of increased health effects.

The main conclusion is that the absence of increased leukemias could be due to several factors and does not necessarily invalidate the NPP hypothesis.

(Postscript: The above discussion of dilution mechanisms is not intended to defend tritium releases from the bomb tests. On the contrary, it shows that the atmospheric bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s radioactively contaminated the totality of the northern hemisphere’s oceans, seas, lakes, ice sheets, and snow-covered lands with low levels of tritium. In the author’s view, this legacy of the bomb tests is regrettable and should not be repeated.)

_________________________________________

Appendix: comparison of estimated tritium concentrations…………………………………………………………………….

October 2, 2026 Posted by | radiation, Reference | Leave a comment

Radiation-related cancer deaths more common in aircrew than other occupations, study finds

By science reporter Jacinta Bowler, https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2026-09-30/pilots-flight-attendants-radiation-cancer-death/107175724

In short:

Almost 7 per cent of all deaths among US flight attendants and pilots from 2020 to 2024 were due to radiation-related cancer, the highest rate among the 500 occupations studied.

The researchers suggested increased mortality could be caused by cosmic radiation, which aircrews are exposed to at higher levels.

What’s next?

The Transport Workers’ Union and experts have called for better protections for workers but the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency says the results are not clear-cut.

A large US study has found that of 500 occupations, flight attendants and pilots have  the highest proportion of radiation-related cancer deaths.

The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked at almost 13 million US death records from 2020–2024.

The researchers found that radiation-related cancers (such as leukaemia, breast, thyroid and skin cancers) were listed on 6.9 per cent of deaths among flight attendants and 6.7 per cent of deaths among pilots.

This was the highest and second-highest proportions of radiation-related cancer deaths across all occupation groups in the US.

In comparison, ground crews, who work in a similar environment to aircrew but without the air travel, do not have the same elevated proportion of radiation-related cancer deaths as the pilots and flight attendants.

“These findings support consideration of occupational radiation protections for aircrew members commensurate with their exposure level,” the researchers concluded.

While the research was based on US data, it might be applicable to air crews around the world, said Catherine Olsen, an epidemiologist and melanoma researcher at QIMR Berghofer who was not involved with the study.

Exposure to cosmic rays

Flight crews spend much longer in the air than the average frequent flyer and are more exposed to cosmic radiation — high-energy particles from the Sun and other cosmic sources.

Exposure to too much cosmic radiation can damage our DNA, cause radiation sickness and increase the risk of some cancers.

On the ground, we are well protected from cosmic radiation.

Australians on average receive 3.4 millisieverts a year from all types of ionising radiation.

But the thinner atmosphere at higher elevations where airplanes fly lets more radiation sneak through.

Aircrews are among the most exposed groups of workers to ionising radiation, according to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).

It limits aircrew exposure to 20 millisieverts (mSv) per year averaged over five years — about the same as three chest CT scans.

The organisation also has a lower “reference level” of 6 mSv per year, that they recommend aircrew and airlines try to maintain.

While it is well known that aircrews are exposed to increased cosmic radiation, linking that to increased cancer mortality is complicated.

Dr Olsen said that comparing air crews with other occupations like ground crews and nuclear workers provided more evidence that the cosmic radiation could be causing the increase in radiation-related cancer deaths.

“I’m confident that it’s a very-well-conducted study,” she said

“A limitation is that there’s a possibility that there might be misclassification on death certificates if that occupation is not recorded properly.”

But an ARPANSA spokesperson said the study did not account for lifestyle factors like alcohol consumption, circadian rhythm disruption and lack of sun protection, which can also increase the risk of radiation-related cancers.

Dr Olsen said if there was an increased risk of death in these occupations, airlines and healthcare professionals needed to be more aware.

“When those flight crew and pilots are having their medical checks, there should be a heightened kind of degree of concern of any symptoms that might be related to cancer.”

Cancer risk ‘not discussed’

Ebanie Fletcher, who has worked as an Australian flight attendant for more than 20 years, said radiation risk was not something that was discussed by the airlines.

“None of it is really talked about, especially not by our safety regulators or the industry as a whole,” she said.

Dr Olsen said there were various approaches to managing exposure for flight crews around the world.

“In the US, even though they classify pilots and flight crew as being occupationally exposed to this ionising radiation, there’s no monitoring of the dose that people are exposed to,” she said.

“In Europe, it’s a little bit more regulated.”

In Europe, airlines are required to assess crew exposure, plan schedules to factor in cumulative risk, and provide protection for pregnant workers.

ARPANSA maintains the Australian National Radiation Dose Register (ANRDR), which records occupational exposure to radiation in industries from uranium mining and some medical facilities.

Airline companies can sign up to this registry, but it is voluntary.

“Airlines monitor and manage rostering arrangements to ensure aircrew do not exceed the reference level,” a spokesperson said.

“Our advice is that there is no evidence of an increased health risk from naturally occurring cosmic radiation during flying when exposure is maintained below the 6 mSv per year reference level.”

Ms Fletcher said she did not believe that individual doses were monitored in the Australian industry, although she noted that airlines did limit flight hours when someone was pregnant.

“Apparently it’s important to them when we’re pregnant not to be exposed to radiation but not for any other purpose,” she said.

Virgin, one of the Australian airlines the ABC contacted, said that it monitored radiation to the standards in line with ARPANSA guidelines.

Transport Workers’ Union national secretary Michael Kaine said more needed to be done.

If we’re learning that the job of keeping Australians safe in the skies may come with serious health risks, we can’t leave workers to deal with those risks as a scatter-gun approach, airline by airline,” he said in a statement.

“We need an approach that puts workers and passengers at the centre.”

October 2, 2026 Posted by | radiation | Leave a comment

US Million Person Study on low dose rate exposures to radiation: Preliminary Findings

What is significant is that the study runs directly contrary to the views of the US President and can be viewed as a direct riposte to them. So far, no collective quantitative risk estimates from this study have been published in the US.

September 16, 2026, https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/us-million-person-study-on-low-dose-rate-exposures-to-radiation-preliminary-findings/

This article requires an extensive introduction, so bear with me .

Current risk estimates for radiation are based by the ICRP principally on the Japanese survivors of the US bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  This is the Life Span Study (LSS). However it has several shortcomings including that it is based on instantaneous exposures (lasting less than a second) to high blasts of gamma radiation and neutrons.  Other shortcomings were that the studies did not commence until 5 years after the explosions and many unrecorded deaths occurred during the interval. Also the translation of the estimated risks in the acutely-exposed Japanese population to people in different countries exposed to lower doses over lengthier time periods introduces large uncertainties in the LSS risk estimates.

Finally the LSS only covered ~80,000 people. A better, larger study covering ~300,000 workers – was the INWORKS study of nuclear industry workers in the US, UK and France which found radiation risks higher than the risks observed by the Life Span Study but broadly similar to it. (It is explained that the phrase “broadly similar to” means that the uncertainty ranges of the two studies overlapped.) The INWORKS study has been examined and discussed by me previously  -see https://www.ianfairlie.org/news/important-new-bmj-article-increases-our-perception-of-radiation-risks/

A third, even larger, study – the US Million Person Study- has been underway in the US for several years. For its history, see – Boice Jr JD., André Bouville, Lawrence T. Dauer, Ashley P. Golden, Richard Wakeford (2022) Introduction to the special issue on the US Million Person Study of health effects from low-level exposure to radiation. International Journal of Radiation Biology, Volume 98, 2022 – Issue 4.

The quantitative results of this US study have not yet been published formally, it seems, in any academic scientific article. However, rather strangely,  an article containing its preliminary findings has been  just published in the UK magazine of the UK Society for Radiological Protection.  See https://srp-uk.org/professional-resources/radiation-protection-today

I say “rather strangely”,  but perhaps it’s unsurprising for a US study to first release in the UK controversial findings on radiation risks, given the US President’s recent attacks on internationally-accepted cornerstones of radiation protection, such as the linear no threshold model of radiation risks and ALARA.

The US Million Person Study of Low-Dose-Rate Health Effects (https://www.millionpersonstudy.org/) is the largest radiation occupational epidemiologic study that I’m aware of. It eventually will cover about a million US nuclear workers and military veterans etc. It is examining cancer and non-cancer morbidity (cases) and mortality (deaths) after exposures to low rates of radiation. It includes nuclear industry workers who predominately received about 300 mGy over their working lives. In other words, it is not a low level study but a low rate study. It includes workers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge Mound Nuclear Facility, Rocky Flats plant, civilian nuclear utilities, industrial radiographers, medical radiation radiographers, and workers at military nuclear weapons test sites.

Early findings based on ~ 600,000 US workers and US military veterans include the following

  • an association between occupational radiation exposures and Parkinson’s disease
  • a low risk of lung cancer
  • a risk of leukemia (excluding chronic lymphocytic leukemia)
  • some evidence of increases in all solid cancers and
  • evidence that chromosomal damage could be detected 65 years after veteran exposure to fallout from nuclear weapons testing.

These findings are unsurprising and fit in with evidence elsewhere , especially the INWORKS studies.  What is significant is that the study runs directly contrary to the views of the US President and can be viewed as a direct riposte to them. So far, no collective quantitative risk estimates from this study have been published in the US.

The Million Person Study continues at large US DoE facilities including Hanford and Oak Ridge, and US Navy personnel, including nuclear submarine sailors and naval shipyard workers. interestingly, is also re-examining the US radium dial workers from the 1920s and 1930s. The ongoing Million Person Study also covers

  • safe and secure cleanup of historically contaminated US nuclear sites
  • protection from radiation exposures during space travel
  • the development of new forms of nuclear power designs and
  • resilience preparation for response to emergency radiological incidents.

The SRPS article was written by two US academics, Dr Nicole Martinez and Dr Laurence Dauer. They conclude– somewhat courageously given the US President’s outspoken views –

“A better understanding of potential impacts of radiological exposure enables more informed decisions which in turn can support a more sustainable and prosperous future. See http://www.millionpersonstudy.org”

September 21, 2026 Posted by | radiation | Leave a comment

Radiation harm isn’t gender-neutral. And no one is talking about it.

Let’s explore…together.

Meet Atoms & Eve: Science-driven radiation education

Beyond Nuclear 11 Sept 26, https://www.atomsandeve.org/

ATOMS & EVE™ is a joint educational campaign founded by Beyond Nuclear and Generational Radiation Impact Project.

The ATOMS & EVE project is a new science-driven, educational resource that explores how radiation harms female bodies more than male bodies, children more than adults, and pregnancy most of all.

“We are constantly being told about ‘a permissible amount of radiation.’ Who permitted it? Who has any right to permit it?” – Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Biology matters.
Science confirms that female bodies suffer more harm from ionizing radiation than male bodies. 

We must move beyond seeing biological sex as a “confounding factor” and instead treat it as a primary health indicator.

This is not abstract math. It is physical, measurable, and permanent damage to our DNA.

A Failure of Policy.
It is time to stop ignoring the evidence.

Radiation policy is informed by the “average” worker. Women and girls face unique disproportionate dangers that are invisible to decision makers.

Our opportunity:
A path to better protection.

We have the scientific data to make radiation standards more protective right now. By centering policy on the documented biological impacts—the damage to chromosomes, cells, and organs—we can create a safer future for ourselves and our children.

This is a chance to move from outdated assumptions to evidence-based health protection… to safeguard the next generation by demanding better radiation standards.

Meet Eve

She is an embryo, a toddler, a teenager, a mother and a grandmother.
She is every female throughout the female lifespan.

Why Eve, why now?

The ATOMS & EVE project is a new science-driven educational resource that explores how radiation harms female bodies more than male bodies and children more than adults, and pregnancy most of all.

Eve is our vehicle for sharing what we know with you and your communities!

Eve knows:

  • There is no safe level of exposure
  • Pregnancy is uniquely vulnerable to radiation damage
  • Everyone is already being exposed to a legacy of radioactive pollution left by our uses of nuclear technologies

FACTS

Exposure to ionizing radiation can cause or contribute to:

  • Infertility
  • Endocrine (hormones) disruption
  • Disruption of pregnancy including spontaneous abortion and miscarriage
  • Stress of the immune system
  • Cancer and Leukemia—both adult and childhood
  • Cardiovascular diseases including heart attack and stroke

DID YOU KNOW?

  • “Little girls exposed between birth and 5 years old were twice as likely to get cancer at some point in the next 60 years than were boys.” —Amanda Nichols
  • A landmark 2025 report released by Norwegian People’s Aid warns that past atmospheric nuclear tests are on course to cause at least two million additional cancer deaths worldwide — a stark reminder that the consequences of nuclear testing are far from historical. [1]
  • Radiation’s disproportionate impacts should now be the research and policy focus, as society is poised to make crucial and long-lasting decisions regarding climate change mitigation and future energy sources. [2]

September 13, 2026 Posted by | radiation, women | Leave a comment

Nuclear regulator prepares to abandon a decades-old radiation safety rule

August 27, 2026, Geoff Brumfiel, NPR

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing to change a foundational rule designed to minimize radiation exposure. The update is part of President Trump’s expansive changes to nuclear oversight, as his administration seeks to revive nuclear energy to power data centers for artificial intelligence.

Under a new proposed rule, the agency is eliminating a 50-year-old standard known as “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” (ALARA), which requires the nuclear industry to drive radiation exposure for workers and the public below the stated limits where possible. The new rule also creates a carveout for some workers to get higher exposures to radiation in special circumstances.

For some, the elimination of ALARA is overdue. “Keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable was a fair idea,” said Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. But in practice, the standard forced companies to take increasingly stringent radiation protection measures. It also created ambiguity, Caffrey said, “because what’s ‘reasonable’ to one person isn’t reasonable to another person.”

But others warn that the change could lay the groundwork for higher radiation exposures.

For some, the elimination of ALARA is overdue. “Keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable was a fair idea,” said Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. But in practice, the standard forced companies to take increasingly stringent radiation protection measures. It also created ambiguity, Caffrey said, “because what’s ‘reasonable’ to one person isn’t reasonable to another person.”

But others warn that the change could lay the groundwork for higher radiation exposures.

Since shortly after the dawn of the nuclear age, scientists have been aware of the risks of radiation exposure, and decades of data makes it clear.

“At high radiation doses, nobody’s really arguing: radiation causes cancer,” said David Brenner, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University. High doses of radiation damage DNA and can cause mutations that lead to cancer. But when the dose is low, it’s much harder to determine risk because about 40% of the U.S. population develops cancer at some point in their lifetime.

“As you go down in dose, what you’re looking for is a very small increase in cancer risk over a very large background,” Brenner said. “That’s what makes it really, really hard.”

For the past 50 years or so, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has dealt with this uncertainty by requiring that the nuclear industry adhere to ALARA and keep radiation exposure as low as possible.

Then last May, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a wholesale overhaul of nuclear regulations. The order specifically called out ALARA, claiming the principle was a “flawed” understanding of radiation risks.

The NRC decided not to change its scientific model of radiation risk, known as the Linear No Threshold model, but it has proposed eliminating ALARA.

Speaking this week on the Federal News Network, NRC Chairman Ho Nieh said that ALARA is no longer working…………………………………………………

“Loosey-goosey” rules

The NRC will instead use the existing current threshold of 5 rem for a worker and 0.1 rem for the public as the upper limit for radiation exposure. A whole body CT scan is about 1 rem, according to the EPA…………………………………

The proposed NRC rule doesn’t change its other regulatory limits, but it does create some carve-outs. In particular, the industry would now be able to ask for a “planned occupational dose limit extension,” which would allow workers to receive 10 rem instead of 5 in any given year, providing their overall exposure doesn’t pass 25 rem in a five-year period………………………………

But Lyman, with the Union of Concerned Scientists, thinks that ALARA should stay. He said while it may be imperfect, its net effect has been to reduce radiation exposure to very low levels. The harms of low-dose radiation exposure are difficult to see, but Lyman says NRC’s own models suggest those harms exist.

In his opinion, the revised rule ignores that risk and is designed to desensitize the public to the dangers of radiation. “It’s trying to devalue and deemphasize the harm of ionizing radiation exposure,” he warned. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/nx-s1-5920368/nrc-nuclear-radiation-safety-rules-alara-update

September 2, 2026 Posted by | USA, radiation | Leave a comment

DR Congo’s cobalt boom carries an unwanted cargo: uranium

On the southern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the lumbering
trucks carrying cobalt into Zambia may soon have to pass through towering
radiation detectors — a sign of mounting concerns about uranium
contamination in the ores that are powering the electric revolution.

The DR Congo is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, an essential metal for
batteries. But the frequent presence of radioactive materials at some of
its biggest cobalt mines has led to health risks for workers, rejected
shipments and concerns about safeguarding nuclear material, according to an
investigation by the FT and Lighthouse Reports, a journalism non-profit.


With limited state oversight in mining regions, non-proliferation
specialists and Congolese officials worry that uranium-laced cobalt ore and
other radioactive material could fall into the wrong hands or enter a
covert supply chain hidden from international regulators. Uranium occurs
naturally across the country’s vast “copper belt” region, which
includes the mine that produced the uranium used in the atomic bombs in the
second world war.

New research shows the amount of uranium mingled with the
country’s cobalt exports is much greater than previously believed:
between 2000 and 2024 it was enough to produce 600 nuclear weapons, or fuel
a large 1GW nuclear reactor for a decade, if extracted and enriched.

 FT 30th July 2026, https://www.ft.com/content/77815def-6f50-4adf-8ba3-3643de7bf8ab

August 4, 2026 Posted by | AFRICA, radiation | Leave a comment

As Trump boosts nuclear power, regulators seek to eliminate a longstanding radiation safety practice

Count On News 2. by: JENNIFER McDERMOTT, Associated Press, Jul 26, 2026 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is proposing to eliminate a foundational safety principle that has for 50 years minimized the radiation people in the United States are exposed to and that has been adopted around the world.

Currently, facilities such as nuclear plants, hospitals or academic institutions that use radioactive materials must ensure radiation exposures are kept “as low as reasonably achievable” — the ALARA principle. The NRC proposal would abandon that philosophy while keeping a separate standard on maximum radiation exposure.

The two standards have worked together in radiation safety. Dose limits set the maximum amount of radiation the public and radiation workers can be exposed to, while ALARA kept radiation exposure as low as practical under those limits. Research shows radiation exposure increases a person’s chance of getting cancer, a risk that increases as the dose increases.

The dose limits are not changing. But the NRC, which regulates civilian nuclear energy technologies and radioactive materials, now wants to replace ALARA with a “graded approach” that includes several actions facilities must take depending on the potential dose of radiation to workers. More rigorous radiation protection measures would be required when approaching dose limits to ensure they aren’t exceeded.

This comes as President Donald Trump attempts to quadruple domestic nuclear energy production because of surging electricity demand amid a data center and artificial intelligence boom. Reforming the NRC is one way Trump is trying to speed up nuclear reactor development. He instructed the federal agency in an executive order last year to “ adopt science-based radiation limits.”

The Energy Department, which oversees national energy policies, has already stopped using ALARA. The NRC expects to finalize its radiation protection regulations in the coming months………………………………………………………………………………………….

Without ALARA, could radiation doses creep closer to the limits?…………………………………………………………….

Some experts question the wisdom of eliminating ALARA

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, cautions that some parts of the NRC proposal could raise permissible radiation doses in certain cases, while still staying below the cap. Lyman highlighted a proposed revision to radionuclide emissions standards, in particular.

Radiation exposure to the general public is limited to 100 millirem per year. A typical dose of radiation from a chest X-ray is 10 millirem.

The NRC wants to increase its radionuclide emissions standards from a conservative 10 millirem per year dose to 25 millirem per year, based on a hypothetical person living in a house at the property line for a nuclear plant.

The NRC should improve, rather than eliminate, ALARA, Lyman said, to protect the public and workers. ALARA has become a political target because some people mistakenly believe radiation exposures have to be as low as possible no matter the cost, Lyman said. In reality, it allows tradeoffs………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.counton2.com/news/national-news/ap-as-trump-boosts-nuclear-power-regulators-seek-to-eliminate-a-longstanding-radiation-safety-rule/

July 29, 2026 Posted by | radiation, UK | Leave a comment

Challenging New York Times’s Suggestion That We Should Stop Worrying and Love Radiation

The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) substantiates Liner No Threshhold LNT, as did the 2021 NRC decision to deny a 2015 request to get rid of LNT.

Karl Grossman, July 15, 2026 https://fair.org/home/challenging-nyts-suggestion-that-we-should-stop-worrying-and-love-radiation/

Alfred Meyer, long active in Physicians for Social Responsibility and former co-chair of its Radiation and Health Committee, challenged an article in the July 3 New York Times, headlined “US to Overhaul Radiation Safety Rules to Spur Nuclear Expansion.”

In a July 6 letter to the article’s author, Brad Plumer, Meyer wrote:

When I read the New York Times business page, I assume that there is a high level of investigative journalism being presented so that the news I read will present thorough and well-researched information about the topic at hand. This is not the case with this article.

Plumer began his piece by paraphrasing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposal on July 1 to overhaul its safety rules for radiation exposure at nuclear power plants. As he put it, the commission was concerned by the cost of the regulations and their tendency to “go beyond what is needed to protect human health.”

The NRC’s proposal asserted that current regulations often incur additional costs “without a measurable safety benefit”—for example, Plumer supplied, when regulators install additional equipment at plants in order to push radiation exposure “far below the legal limits.” Maximum dose limits, the agency said, are already set “well below levels associated with known health effects.”

This was meant to corroborate Plumer’s characterization about costliness, but Meyer noted the lack of substantiation:

You provide no rationale, evidence or citations for these claims, making simple conclusions about a very complex topic. How do you know that human health is indeed being protected, or as you imply, being over-protected? What examples can you provide of radiation exposure being “far below the legal limits”?

Trying to ‘simplify things’

Meyer focused on Plumer’s denial of “measurable safety benefits” from nuclear regulations, the premise of the central question Plumer posed in his piece: How much protection against low levels of radiation is worthwhile? Meyer took issue with Plumer’s framing:

For decades, many researchers and regulators have tried to simplify things by adopting what’s known as the “linear no-threshold model,” which says that the effects of radiation scale down linearly with the dose, and that even tiny amounts of radiation can have small negative effects.

Calling the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model an attempt to “simplify things,” Meyer noted, is “a rather pejorative comment in light of the significant scientific evidence at hand”:

The 2006 National Academy of Sciences report on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR VII) substantiates LNT, as did the 2021 NRC decision to deny a 2015 request to get rid of LNT.

Plumer “never mentions the history and current state of study and knowledge of the health effects of exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation,” Meyer said, pointing to 80 years of research:

The atomic photographer Robert Del Tredici includes a lengthy endnote in his 1985 book At Work in the Field of the Bomb, which recounts Karl Z. Morgan, the father of health physics—aka the study of the health effects of radiation—discussing how the effects of low-level radiation were well-researched in the late 1940s and were found to be significant. As Morgan’s medical perspectives raised public health questions about further expansion of the nuclear enterprise, they were minimized and ignored.

One of Plumer’s unquestioned and unexplored assertions especially stood out:

Experts agree that high doses of radiation are dangerous and can cause various types of cancer. But there’s much more disagreement about the effects of lower doses of radiation, such as the amounts that workers at nuclear power plants might receive in the course of their jobs. Different studies have found that low doses can be harmful, neutral or even beneficial.

The idea that low doses of radiation may be “even beneficial” refers to “radiation hormesis”—a widely dismissed claim of some nuclear promoters that exposure to radiation exercises the immune system and thus is healthy.

‘History of atomic press censorship’

“This piece,” said Meyer,

serves to promote the current government policies to greatly expand nuclear activities—it is not investigative journalism that thoroughly considers the topics at hand to give the public the information necessary for informed decision-making.

Meyer added: “The New York Times has an uncomfortable history of atomic press censorship.” Meyer cited as “a prime example” William Laurence, who, he noted, helped craft the official military line on Hiroshima while still ostensibly a Times journalist. Laurence was a  Times science writer who also worked for the Manhattan Project, for which he drafted press releases and other government statements.

Back at the Times after the war, for years Laurence glorified nuclear technology. As author Beverly Deepe Keever wrote in her book News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb, Laurence “served as a scribe writing government propaganda” to obscure the deadly and harmful effects of radiation.

More recently, Matthew Wald, who spent 38 years at the Times with a beat including the nuclear industry, left the paper in 2014 and the following year joined the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s Washington-based trade group, as a policy analyst and communications consultant.

“Is history repeating itself, or can the New York Times cover the whole story here?” Meyer wrote. “The future of our genome is at stake.”

Meyer signed his letter as the treasurer of Physicians for Social Responsibility New York. He was also formerly the chapter’s president, the executive director of PSR Wisconsin, a longtime member of PSR’s national board, and the program director of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. He has not yet received a response from Plumer.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.

Research Assistance: Emily Marie Spencer

July 20, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Radiation Protection -analysis of NRC proposals

the US NRC is under pressure to weaken its current standards at a time when the scientific
evidence suggests these need to be tightened.

Tony Webb, July 2026.

Current standards under threat
Operating under a Directive from US President Donald Trump the US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) proposes to weaken its current radiation protection standards – at a time when
the scientific evidence suggests these existing standards underestimate the risks faced by workers
and the public – and need to be significantly tightened. Unions, public health and environment
groups around the world are pressing governments, international and national protection agencies
to resist pressure from the USA to follow suit – and are calling for a comprehensive review the
evidence leading to increased worker and public protection.

In May 2025 US President Trump issued a Directive to the NRC to revise all its current regulations
and specifically those relating to radiation protection. It called for the NRC to abandon the
fundamental principle that underpins standards worldwide that there is no threshold or ‘safe’ level
of exposure to Ionising radiation. Any dose however small can be the one that triggers what are
known as ‘stochastic’ health effects that emerge over time from damage to individual cells in the
body – damage that is inadequately repaired and where the cells go on to reproduce in in
this damaged form, later manifesting as cancers, genetic, or other health damage. Some
other effects such as skin damage are called ‘deterministic’. A minimum or ‘threshold’ level
of exposure is required, and the severity of the damage increases with the level of exposure.
The severity of stochastic health effects is independent of the dose received – you either get
is or you don’t but the risk-probability that you do increases with the dose received over
your lifetime exposure.

Following from this principle that there is no safe level radiation standards required that all
exposures be kept ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ – known as the ALARA principle. . The
Presidential directive specifically instructed the NRC to reconsider this principle. It also required
review of the legal dose-limits for the amount of non-naturally occurring radiation that workers and
the public can be exposed to in any year. These annual dose limits have been set by national
standards agencies based mainly on international reviews of studies of Japanese survivors of the
bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These survivors who received relatively
large doses over a short time period. The level of damage to their health, notably their rates of
cancer has been tracked over time and used to estimate the probabilistic risk of stochastic damage
from lower doses spread over longer time periods using a ‘Linear No-Threshold’ (LNT) model –
essentially based on the no safe level principle. The risk estimates have been revised over time as
evidence emerged for higher cancer rates among the survivors and revision of the estimates of
doses they received that might have caused these cancers.

More recently large scale studies of nuclear plant workers in France the UK and USA – known as the
INWORKS studies (with more accurate measures of doses received and health effects compared to
non-exposed workers) have shown that the estimates used to set the current standards significantly
under-estimate the risk, and that the risk at low doses – over longer time periods may be
proportionately greater than the LNT model estimates suggest. These studies also show significantly
elevated levels or cardio-vascular diseases such as heart damage and strokes, and other worker
studies show elevated levels of dementia associated with radiation exposure. Together these
studies suggest there is an urgent need to comprehensively review the evidence of risks on which
the current national and international standards are based – particularly worker dose limits . In
addition recent meta analyses of cancer rates in large populations living close to nuclear power plants in Europe and the USA show that there is a significant general increase the closer people live
to these facilities particularly affecting the young and the elderly. These suggest the need to review
the standards that set dose-limits for public exposures alongside those reviewing expsore of
workers.


In short, the US NRC is under pressure to weaken its current standards at a time when the scientific
evidence suggests these need to be tightened.

The NRC proposals
Following the May 2025 Presidential Directive, the NRC has now, after several delays, released its
proposed revision of the standards. It clearly faced a dilemma as adopting the President’s suggested
changes would mean reversing its earlier 1991 decision that specifically rejected these same
proposals requested by industry lobbyists. In essence the 179-page proposal document (open for
45-days for comments) offers its reasoned judgements on the three key aspects of the review: the
LNT model, the ALARA principle and the occupational and public exposure limits.


To its credit the NRC retains the LNT as the basis for assessing risks at lower doses than those
received by Japanese bomb survivors. Hardly surprising as to have rejected this would have flown in
the face of international scientific pinion worldwide and its own 1991 decision. It does give some
credence the highly contested ‘Hormesis’ model based on limited studies suggesting that there may
be positive effects on health at low doses due to the capacity for cellular repair but ultimately
concludes that there is no scientific consensus that would support this or any other alternative to
the LNT model.

Unfortunately, proposes abandoning the ALARA principle arguing that it is subject to ‘excessive
subjectivity that leads to overly conservative assessments’ for managing exposures below the the
occupational and public dose limits. It is clearly identified as a burden on the nuclear industry – and
thus an impediment to the policy of reducing barriers to its development and operation. In its
place the NRC proposes ‘operating principles’ for managing doses below the legally enforceable
limits. Above (and perhaps only above) an expected dose of 100 mrem (1 MSv) per year – the limit
for public exposure – employees would need to be given ‘radiation worker training’. Above (and
again perhaps only above) an expected dose of 500 mrem (5 mSv) /year). i.e., at 10% of the
regulated exposure limit, employers would be required to monitor individual workers exposures. It
further suggests a cost-benefit approach for reducing exposures indicating that it would be
appropriate for employers to spend up to $5,200 (in 2014 US $) to avert each rem of occupational
exposure. If a radiation protection measure were more costly than that, the licensee would have an
acceptable cost-justified basis for not implementing the measure and instead accruing the dose as
long as that dose was within the regulatory dose limits.

The occupational dose limit is however further weakened by allowing exposures up to double the 5
rem (50 mSv) annual limit. Previously employers could apply for ‘planned special exposures’ for
situations needing higher worker-doses. These are no re-badged as ‘occupational dose limit
extensions’ (DLEs) permitting male workers (female workers are excluded) to receiving a dose of up
to 10 rem (100 mSV) in any year provided these do not result in the worker’s five-year average
exceeding the 5 rem (50mSv) annual limit – i.e. a total over any five year period of 25 rem (250 mSv).

These proposals will leave US workers facing permitted exposures greater than recommended by
international bodies and adopted by most national standards-setting agencies where the targeted
annual limit is 20mSv with exceptional exposures permitted up to 50 mSv provided these do not
exceed 20 mSv averaged over any five-year period. This 20 mSv annual averaging standard has been
in place since 1991 but was never adopted in the USA which retains the earlier 5 rem (50 mSv) annual limit. As indicated above the scientific evidence now calls for a revision of the stochastic
health damage risk estimates and a further tightening of the standards rather than their relaxation
as proposed by the NRC. Indeed it is notable that nowhere in the NRC proposals is here any mention
of, let alone critical review of the peer reviewed INWORKS studies.


The NRC does reject the Presidential Directive’s suggestion that the public exposure limit be raised
to 500 mrem (5 mSv). it leaves it at 100 mrem (1 mSv) in line with the international norm though it
does propose relaxing the emissions standards for radiation and radioactive material from nuclear
facilities from the existing 10 mrem to 25 mem. Again, these proposed relaxations come at a time
when the evidence suggests higher risks to the public living close to such plants and that a tightening
of existing standards is warranted. And again, nowhere does the NRC mention let alone critique this
evidence for increased health risks for populations living close to nuclear facilities.

International Opposition to the US NRC proposals
The NRC proposals are currently open for comments with a final decision on the revised regulations
due by the end of 2026. While any revised radiation protection standards will initially apply only to
the USA there are implications for radiation protection in other countries. Pressure on international
and national standards bodies can be expected. As well as the civil nuclear program it is expected
that the revised standards will apply to US based military facilities. Whether these US, or other
countries’ standards will apply to US military facilities and to any jointly owned civilian enterprises
based in other countries may be in doubt. In Australia for example a Naval Nuclear Powered
Submarine Safety Regulator (ANNPSR) has been created to oversee construction, operation,
maintenance, decommissioning and radioactive waste management from the UK, US (AUKUS)
nuclear submarine program. This new regulator reports to the Department of Defence and is
separate from the existing regulator, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency
(ARPANSA) which reports to the Department of Health. How these regulators will collaborate, and
which standards will prevail is yet to be determined.

In Australia, as in other countries, notably the USA, Canada, coalitions bringing together the
concerns of trade unions, public health organisations and environment groups are campaigning for
rejection of the US NRC led proposals that would weaken current radiation protection standards
and for a comprehensive review of the scientific evidence that now strongly suggests the risks to
health of workers and the public are greater that when standards were last revised – now some 25
years ago – and need to be revised and significantly tightened.

July 19, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Trump Administration Scrapping Nuclear Energy Rules Requiring Plants to Keep Radiation Levels “As Low as Reasonably Achievable”

Horrifying.

By Joe Wilkins,  Jul 12, 2026, https://futurism.com/science-energy/trump-nuclear-regulation-radiation-energy

As government agencies go, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has left a lot to be desired, often operating less like a government watchdog and more as an industry partner. There’s fee recovery, for example, which effectively mandates the industry pay its own regulators’ salary, as well as the NRC’s habit of trusting voluntary leak reports from reactor operators, not to mention its history of hiding internal safety data to protect its reputation.

As if those deficiencies weren’t bad enough, president Donald Trump is now stripping what’s left of the commission’s mandate down to the bone. Last week, the NRC proposed a bold amendment to its long-standing nuclear safety principles: deleting a line requiring nuclear plant operators to keep radiation exposure “as low as is reasonably achievable.”

According to the Hill, the NRC justifies the move by saying it will remove “unnecessary ambiguity.” But critics say this rule is the whole reason energy companies bother keeping radiation levels as low as possible in the first place.

“Facility owners felt like… ALARA [as low as reasonably achievable] was forcing them to go well below the allowable radiation limits and spend a lot of money to do that,” director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists Edwin Lyman told the Hill. “This is opening the door for sloppier practices,” Lyman continued, and “worse management.”

It gets worse. Also per the Hill, the NRC likewise announced plans to significantly weaken its approach to the National Environmental Policy Act, a foundational piece of legislation dating back to 1970. On Wednesday, the NRC said it wants to gut draft environmental reviews entirely — which, in practice, means kneecapping the public’s chance to weigh in before a reactor gets the green light.

If that weren’t enough, the commission also wants to wash its hands of its mandate to review basic environmental nuisances like noise, dust, and air pollution associated with nuclear facilities. That’s if they even do a review in the first place, as the proposed changes would exempt certain existing reactors, and even new reactors from regular inspection altogether, the Hill reports.

The proposed changes come just a few months after the US Department of Energy began stripping safety regulations that limited nuclear workers’ exposure to radiation. In effect, these changes allow energy companies to speed up productivity, unlocking higher profits at their workers’ expense.

The timing of it all is hard to overstate: with several new nuclear reactors gearing up for operations throughout the US, it’s clear the Trump administration is doing all it can to fast-track incoming nuclear facilities, consequences be damned.

July 17, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

Changes to radiation protection in the USA -could have been worse but are still bad.

Tony Webb 2 July 26

The US NRC has now released its proposed revisions to radiation protection standards
mandated by President Trump’s 2025 Directive (EO14300). It could have been worse. The
proposals do not completely abandon the established principle that there is no safe level of
exposure in favour of the contested view that low level exposures are ‘beneficial’. They do
not propose raising the existing permissible limits on exposure for workers and the public.
They do however abandon other important principles such as that all exposures should be
kept as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) and give the nuclear industry flexible options
for a whole range of ‘operating procedures’ that can be used to control and limit exposures

– all overtly designed to ease the regulatory burden on the industry.

While repeatedly claiming that existing standards are already  “conservative” these US
regulations already permit higher exposures than recommended internationally. The US 5
Rem (50 mSv ) occupational exposure limit is 2.5 times greater than the internationally
recommended limit used in most countries. Far from placing the proposals in the context of
the scientific evidence the proposals refer only to the outdated and flawed Life-span studies
of the Japanese bomb survivors who received high doses over short time periods rather
than studies of populations receiving low doses over longer time periods. In the whole 180-
page document outlining the proposed new regs I could not find a single mention of the
INWORKS studies of European and US nuclear plant workers that show the current
international standards underestimate the current internationally accepted level of
radiation-induced cancer risks used to set occupational exposure limits.

There is also no
mention of the increased risks for cardio-vascular diseases and dementia faced by such
workers and no mention of the studies of populations living close to nuclear plants that
show higher cancer rates – increasing the closer people live to these facilities. Buried in the
detail where devils usually hide there are also proposals that would weaken the so called
‘planned special exposures’ limits – the carve out that is used in the USA and elsewhere to
permit hiring of casual workers as ‘radiation sponges’ for the radiation-dirty jobs in annual
shutdown maintenance and clean-up operations for nuclear power plants. A closer reading
will probably reveal a more concerns but overall, the NRC proposals represent a significant
weakening of US standards that need to be opposed both within the USA and globally lest
they lead to weakening of standards or operating procedures for protection in other
countries. Other countries have reason to worry that joint operations with the USA (like the
Australian AUKUS nuclear submarine deal) and shared technologies that use these weaker
NRC standards as the basis for their design will be used as a backdoor for relaxation of
protection standards worldwide. US groups and others interested have 45 days to register
objections with the NRC to this latest Trump Dictated obscenity. Comments must be
submitted electronically using https://www.regulations.gov


On the positive side the legitimate concerns raised by these US proposals provide unions,
public health and environment groups in all countries with a ‘calling card’ to raise the demand with our national protection agencies for improved regulations for occupational
and public exposures in line with the available scientific evidence that shows current
standards need to be significantly tightened.

July 8, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

US moves to eliminate longtime radiation safety principle for nuclear power

“the change could ultimately make it so that currently low doses of radiation that workers and the public are exposed to “could increase really all the way up to regulatory limits without any sanction from the NRC.”

by Rachel Frazin – 07/02/26, https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5951671-nuclear-power-radiation-exposure-nrc/

The federal government is proposing to overhaul radiation safety regulations for nuclear power, including by eliminating a long-term principle for nuclear safety.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) this week proposed to get rid of the requirement for nuclear plants to ensure that radiation exposure is “as low as is reasonably achievable.”

Proponents of the change say just using radiation dose limits is less subjective than going by the “as low as is reasonably achievable” principle — and that it led to overly conservative protections that stifled the nuclear industry.

Supporters of the current language, however, say that having the “as low as reasonably achievable” principle, also known as ALARA, in place ensures that nuclear plants take all measures possible to reduce exposure for workers and the general public.

NRC Chair Ho Nieh said in a statement that the agency is “raising the standard for regulatory clarity, not lowering the standard for safety.”

“Our radiation dose limits remain unchanged — what we’re eliminating is unnecessary ambiguity,” he said.

But critics say that eliminating ALARA means getting rid of a key incentive for energy companies to keep radiation levels as low as possible — and could mean more cancer cases.

“Facility owners felt like … ALARA was forcing them to go well below the allowable radiation limits and spend a lot of money to do that,” said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Lyman warned that the change could ultimately make it so that currently low doses of radiation that workers and the public are exposed to “could increase really all the way up to regulatory limits without any sanction from the NRC.”

He said this could include by having employees work longer shifts and therefore getting more radiation exposure.

Overall, he said, “this is opening the door for sloppier practices” and “worse management.”

In addition to axing ALARA, the NRC is proposing other changes, including loosening emissions limits for radioactive material.

It said that under one of the rules it is proposing to change, current regulations would allow for an estimated four excess cases of fatal cancer for every 10,000 people exposed to the maximum allowable radiation for 70 years. It said that the change it is making would allow this number to go up to nine cases for every 10,000 people. 

It also proposed increasing how much radiation caregivers for people who receive radiation treatment can be exposed to.

The agency said that all of the changes it is proposing would save the industry about $9.53 million per year. 

The moves come as the Trump administration has been pushing for the U.S. to build more nuclear power. Last year, an executive order from President Trump set the goal of quadrupling the nation’s nuclear power capacity by 2050.

It also directed the NRC to reconsider its use of ALARA and to speed up approvals for nuclear reactor licenses.

While the NRC is technically an independent agency, it is made up of three Republicans and two Democrats.

Last year, the White House fired a Democrat from the commission, which at the time, had a 3-2 Democratic majority. On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled the White House can conduct such firings.

July 7, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

US looking at easing restrictions on radiation exposure at the nation’s nuclear power plants

“This will only increase the disease burden at a time when cancer rates are already rising among younger people,”

The proposal would eliminate a standard to keep radiation exposure ‘as low as reasonably achievable’

The Independent, Rachel Dobkin in New YorkThursday 02 July 2026

Federal regulators are looking at easing restrictions on radiation exposure at the nation’s nuclear power plants.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent agency aimed at ensuring the safe use of radioactive materials, proposed Wednesday eliminating a standard to keep radiation exposure “as low as is reasonably achievable,” also called ALARA.

ALARA is based on the linear no-threshold model, which presumes that any dose of radiation carries a proportional risk of harm.

The commission said in a press release that the proposal would introduce changes, including a graded approach to radiation dose management “based on risk and operational circumstances” and expanding options for managing workplace radiation exposure.

The Independent has reached out to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for comment.

The changes could save the nuclear industry about $9.53 million a year, according to documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission obtained by The Hill.

Edwin Lyman, a physicist ​and nuclear safety advocate at the ​Union of Concerned Scientists, told Reuters, “In eliminating its use of ​the ALARA principle, the agency’s sweeping new proposed rule would allow nuclear facility workers and ​the general public ⁠to be exposed to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation just to save the nuclear industry money.”

“This will only increase the disease burden at a time when cancer rates are already rising among younger people,” Lyman said.

The number of new cancer cases increased among people under age 50 from 2010 through 2019, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted in documents that the proposal would address part of President Donald Trump’s executive order to reform the agency. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/nuclear-plants-radiation-exposure-rules-b3007995.html

July 6, 2026 Posted by | radiation, USA | Leave a comment

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