Very low doses of ionising radiation statistically still give children increased cancer risk
Kristin Shrader-Frechette: Millions of US children receive X-rays each
year, but university physicians recently discovered that radiation doses as
low as 1 to 5 millisievert may give these children small, but statistically
significant, increased risks of cancer. (A millisievert measures the
biological effect of ionizing radiation on human tissue.).
However, the
annual allowed public dose from each nuclear facility in the United States
is 1 to 5 millisievert. Because even a dose of 1 to 5 millisieverts likely
increases cancer risks, and at least 70 percent of US reactors have
released radioactivity that violates health standards, should populations
near nuclear facilities be tested?
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 21st May 2026, May 2026
CHANGES TO RADIATION PROTECTION STANDARDS – FOR WORSE OR FOR BETTER?
Tony Webb, May 17, 2026, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/WhctKLcDwkXLRPthNZwfjCSsBVWXNmPvNPFqnmqNVGDcPLVtBDMvdgXHsDPZrKHkgNfHZjG?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1.1
Changes for worse or better protection for workers and the public is on the international
and national political agenda in a number of countries. Trade Union, environment and
public health groups around the world are concerned that the USA is considering proposals
that would weaken radiation protection standards at a time when the scientific evidence
suggests these need to be significantly tightened.
Our concern arises as a result of a Directive (EO 14300) 1 issued in May 2025 by US President
Donald Trump requiring the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to review nuclear
safety regulations with particular reference to radiation protection of workers and the
public. The Directive instructs the NRC to abandon fundamental principles that have
formed the basis for radiation protection for much of the past century. These include: the
internationally accepted position that there is no threshold or safe level of exposure; that,
as a consequence, all exposures should be kept as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) ;
and all exposures to workers and the public be kept below strict annual limits in line with
the best evidence of radiation-induced health risks.
The evidence used to set current standards was drawn mainly from the studies of cancer
rates among the Japanese A-bomb survivors who were exposed to relatively high doses over
short time periods. Since then studies of workers in nuclear power facilities exposed to
lower doses over long time periods show higher rates of cancer than predicted by the
Japanese studies. Rather than indicating any threshold these studies suggest that at low
doses the cancer rates are proportionately higher than expected from the Linear No-
Threshold model used to set current standards. 2 Worker studies also show elevated rates of
cardio-vascular diseases 3 , and increased rates of dementia 4 . In addition, studies on
populations around nuclear power plants are now showing higher cancer rates affecting
particularly children 5 and the elderly 6 – correlated to how close they lived to these facilities.
Despite this mounting evidence that exposure limits should be lowered the likely result of
changes in line with the Presidential directive would be to increase the permissible exposure
limit for workers and the public to five times the current internationally recommended
level.
The US NRC is clearly faced with a dilemma. To adopt the changes demanded by the
President would require reversing its 2021 decision that specifically rejected these same
proposals 7 . The initial date for publication of the NRC’s draft response for public
consultation was 23 February 2026. This was deferred to 30 April and again at short notice
to 24 June. One might speculate that despite large scale resignations and lay-offs among
NRC staff there remain some with scientific integrity opposing the changes. However the
final revision of standards is required by end of November 2026. Given the President’s
record for seeking retribution on government representatives or officials who oppose his
plans it is hard to see any outcome from the NRC other than a change to weaken the US
standards.
There will also likely be pressure on international and national standards agencies to align
with changes in the USA. Some push-back can be expected. Already the heads of European
standards agencies have issued a statement supporting the LNT and ALARA principles and insisted that exposure standards be set on the basis of the scientific evidence without
undue influence. 8 However NRC changes in line with the Trump Presidential Directive will
embolden the nuclear power lobby and create pressure for change where there are joint
ventures involving US military or industrial interests. These changes are also likely to
impede public pressure for review and improvement of current standards.
In Australia, for example, there are a number of joint ventures in uranium and radioactive
rare earths and mineral sands mining and the government has already established a
separate Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator (ANNPSR)to oversee all aspects of
construction, operation, maintenance, decommissioning and nuclear waste management
under the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) nuclear submarine program. While these standards are
expected to be consistent with those of the current Australian Radiation and Nuclear Safety
Agency (ARPANSA) the pressure for change can come from either agency. Hopefully it will
be politically independent science-based pressure to not merely oppose the direction
prompted by the US President’s directive but for better standards to protect health of
workers and the public where they are routinely exposed to ionising radiation.
References and Further Reading……………………………………
Infant mortality rates in San Luis Obispo County in proximity to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) Joseph J. Mangano MPH MBA, April 29, 2026
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The two Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors in San Luis Obispo County CA began operations in 1984
and 1985. They have generated enormous amounts of highly radioactive waste. Most is stored at
the site, but some is routinely released into the environment – and into humans through breathing,
food, and water. However, no studies on health effects to the local population have been done.
Exposure to radiation is especially harmful to the fetus and infant. This report analyzes trends and
current patterns of newborn and infant health in San Luis Obispo County, compared to the state of
California. Results show that county rates have shifted from below to above the state:
Infant Deaths. Before Diablo Canyon opened (1968-1984), the county death rate under one year
was 16% below the state. Most recently (2010-2024), the county was 1% above the state, including
11% and 23% higher for white non-Hispanics and white Hispanics.
Premature Births. In the earliest period available (1995-1999), the county rate of premature births
(<36 weeks gestation) was 21% below the state. Most recently (2020-2024), the rate was 3% above
the state (8% and 31% higher for white non-Hispanics and white Hispanics).
Birth Defects. In the period 2016-2024, the county rate of 12 types of birth defects was 114%
greater than (more than double) the state, 3rd highest among the 35 largest California counties.
Other Newborn Health Measures. In addition, the county also has higher current (2016-2024) rates
of common newborn risk factors, including those requiring assisted ventilation, those with low
five-minute Apgar scores (a measure of infant health), and newborns transferred to another facility.
Child Cancer. Child cancer is believed to often be an adverse outcome that began in pregnancy.
Early in Diablo Canyon’s operation (1988-1992), county cancer incidence 0-19 was 26% below
the state; in the 30 years since then (1993-2022), the county rate was just 2% below the state.
No explanation for these findings is apparent, as risk factors in the county are not elevated.
Compared to the state, the county has low rates of minorities, uninsured, foreign born, and
languages other than English spoken at home; and similar rates of income, education, and poverty.
The county rate of the most common maternal birth risk factors are below the state
(overweight/obese mothers, mothers <20 or >35, mothers on WIC or Medicaid, and previous
Cesarean section).
Further review of county health patterns is warranted to assess what role exposures to radioactivity
from Diablo Canyon has played in these trends. Results should be made available to officials and
the public. No major decision on the future of the plant should be made without a thorough
understanding of the impact exposures have had on local health………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://radiation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Diablo-Canyon-report-November-2025.pdf
The Nightmare of Fukushima 15 Years Later
SCHEERPOST, By Joshua Frank, March 20, 2026
“…………………………………………………………………………………… The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, built by General Electric (GE) in the mid-1960s, was designed to withstand natural disasters, but its creators never foresaw an earthquake like that. When the plant’s sensors detected the quake, its reactors automatically shut down. That emergency shutdown (or scram) halted its fission process, triggering backup power to keep cold seawater flowing through the reactors and spent-fuel containers to prevent overheating. Things at Fukushima were going according to plan until that massive tsunami battered the plant, washing away transmission towers and damaging electrical systems. There were backup generators in the basement, but those, too, had been inundated by waves of seawater, and an already bad situation was about to get far worse.
A power outage at a nuclear power plant is known as a “station blackout.” As you might imagine, it’s one of the worst scenarios any nuclear facility could possibly experience. If all electricity is lost, that means water is no longer being pumped into the reactor’s scalding-hot core to cool it down. And if that core isn’t constantly being cooled, one thing is certain: disaster will ensue. The fission process itself may be complicated, but that’s basic physics. To make matters worse, there were three operating reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Luckily, three others had already been shut down for maintenance. If power wasn’t restored in short order, that would mean that all three of Fukushima’s reactors were in very big trouble.
We would later learn that no one — not at TEPCO, GE, or among Japanese regulators — had ever considered the possibility that all the reactors might lose electricity at once. They had only drawn up plans for one reactor to go down, in which case the others could keep the plant running. But all of them offline, and every generator out of commission? There was no precedent or playbook for that.
The nuclear industry has a reasonably polite name for a disaster like the one that was rocking Fukushima. They refer to it as a “beyond design-basis accident” because no single nuclear plant design can account for every possible problem it might encounter in its lifetime. The fact that there’s a term for this should make you anxious.
Meltdowns and Fallout
Over the next several days, the emergency at Fukushima Daiichi only worsened. Every effort to restore power to its reactors hit a dead end. On-site radiation-detection equipment, which would have triggered warnings and guided evacuation efforts for those in danger, was no longer functioning. Plans to pump water into the reactors to cool them had faltered. Their cores kept overheating, and the boiling pools of spent fuel were at risk of drying out, potentially triggering a massive fire that would release extreme amounts of radiation.
Within three days, following a series of fires, hydrogen explosions, and panic among those aware of what was happening, Fukushima’s Units 1, 2, and 3 experienced full-scale core meltdowns. Over 150,000 people within an 18-mile radius had already been forced to evacuate, and radiation plumes would take two weeks to spread across the northern hemisphere, although the Japanese government wouldn’t admit publicly that any meltdown had occurred until June 2011, three months later.
The only good news for the 13 million people living 150 miles south in Tokyo was that, during and immediately after the meltdowns, prevailing winds carried much of Fukushima’s radioactive material away from the smoldering reactors and out to sea. It’s estimated that 80% of the fallout from Fukushima ended up in the ocean, meaning most of it headed east rather than toward population centers to the south and west. The other fortunate news was that the spent fuel containers had somehow survived it all. If their water levels in the pools had been drained, far more radiation would have been released.
But Tokyo wasn’t completely spared. After years of research, scientists discovered that cesium-rich microparticles had blanketed the greater Tokyo area, an unpopular discovery that drew backlash and threats of academic censorship. Areas around the Fukushima exclusion zones recorded the highest radiation levels. Japanese government officials continually downplayed the dangers of the accident and were reluctant to even classify the event as a Level 7 nuclear disaster, the highest rating on the International Nuclear Event Scale, which would have placed it on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Japanese officials have also failed to conduct long-term epidemiological studies that would include baseline measurements of cancer rates, which has cast doubt on thyroid screenings that found troubling incidents of cancer far higher than researchers expected.
Radioactive Fish
Prior to the earthquake, the ocean’s cesium-137 levels near Fukushima were 2 Becquerels (a unit of radioactivity) per cubic meter, well below the recommended drinking water threshold of 10,000 Becquerels. Just after March 11, 2011, cesium-137 levels there spiked to fifty million before decreasing as sea currents dispersed the radioactive particles away from the coast. The ocean, however, had been poisoned.
In the years that followed the Fukushima nuclear disaster, researchers documented a frightening, yet predictable trend. Radioactive isotopes in seawater were taken up by marine plants (phytoplankton), which then moved up the food chain into tiny marine animals (zooplankton) and, eventually, to fish.
Cesium-137 consumed by fish can reside in their bodies for months, while Strontium-90 remains in their bones for years. If humans then eat such fish, they will also be exposed to those radioactive particles. The more contaminated fish they eat, the greater the radioactive buildup will be.
In 2023, over a decade after the incident, radiation levels remained sky-high in black rockfish caught off the Fukushima coast. Other bottom-dwelling species have been found to be laden with radioactivity, too, including eel and rock trout. Further concerns have been raised about the treated radioactive water that TEPCO continued to release into the ocean, prompting China to suspend seafood imports from Japan. Aside from those findings, there have been very few studies examining the effects of Fukushima’s radiation on ecosystems or on the people of Japan.
“Japan has clamped down on scientific efforts to study the nuclear catastrophe,” claims pediatrician Alex Rosen of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. “There is hardly any literature, any publicized research, on the health effects on humans, and those that are published come from a small group of researchers at Fukushima Medical University.”
Recognizing such levels of radiation, even if confined to the waters near Fukushima, would cast the country’s nuclear industry as a significant threat — not only to Japan but globally. Any admission that Fukushima’s radiation is linked to increased cancer rates would raise broader concerns about nuclear power’s future viability. Radiation exposure is cumulative and, although Fukushima didn’t immediately cause mass casualties, it wasn’t a benign accident either. It took decades before it was accepted that Chernobyl had caused tens of thousands of excess cancer deaths. It may take even longer to completely understand Fukushima’s full effects. In the meantime, the still ongoing cleanup of the burned-out facilities may cost as much as 80 trillion yen ($500 billion).
It’s been 15 years since Fukushima’s reactors experienced those meltdowns and we still don’t fully understand their long-term repercussions. Nuclear power advocates will argue that Fukushima wasn’t a serious incident and that nuclear technology is still safe. They’ll minimize radiation threats, remain optimistic that new reactor designs will never falter, dismiss the fact that there’s simply no permanent solution for radioactive waste, and overlook the inseparable connection between nuclear power and atomic weapons. After all, among other things, we’ll undoubtedly need nuclear energy to help power the artificial intelligence craze, right?………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. With nine nuclear-armed nations and roughly 12,000 nuclear warheads on this planet, worries about nuclear war are unavoidable. However, the danger of a nuclear disaster at a seemingly “peaceful” nuclear facility is often ignored. The future of atomic energy remains uncertain, but it is our duty to eliminate this hazardous energy source before another Fukushima triggers a war-like catastrophe all its own.mhttps://scheerpost.com/2026/03/20/searching-for-solace-in-a-nuclearized-world/
Joshua Frank, a TomDispatch regular, is co-editor of CounterPunch and co-host of CounterPunch Radio. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, and the forthcoming Bad Energy: AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who are Selling Off Our Future, both with Haymarket Books.
Two pieces of news re Radiation and Health.
Tony Webb , Feb 26, 2026
1. Today saw release of a report prepared for the US Department of Energy that will, alongside others from US agencies like OSHA, be feeding into the US NRC review of radiation Protection Standards mandated by the Trump Directive (EO 24300) issued in May last year. The NRC draft of revised regulations on Radiation Safety is expected 30 April 2026. The attached report to the US DoE – with particular significance for radiation safety for workers in and populations living close to nuclear power reactors – gives a clear indication of how this process is likely to result in significant weakening of protection standards
In summary it advocates
- abandoning the Linear No Threshold and As low as Reasonably Achievable principles that offer some protection at low levels of exposure based on the principle that there is no safe level of exposure
- resetting the annual occupational exposure limit to 100 mSv – a doubling of the current US standard of 50mSv and a five-fold increase in the 20mSv annual occupational standard that applies in most other countries including Australia
- raising the public exposure limit from 1 mSv to 5 mSv
I think we can expect other US agencies to submit similar reports
2. As previous posts on this issue have noted these proposals to weaken radiation protection for workers and the public come at a time when the evidence is mounting from studies of workers and communities exposed to radiation releases in and from Nuclear power pants for a revision that would tighten the current standards. Today saw the release of a new book by Ian Fairlie – The Dangers of Ionising Radiation: A Scientific Guide to Radiation Risks for Government Agencies, Legal Professionals and Medical Clinicians has just been published (Ethics International Press. 2026) https://ethicspress.com/products/the-dangers-of-ionising-radiation As anticipated this updates much of the earlier work in Ian Fairlie and Cindy Folkers book –
The Scientists Who Alerted Us To The Dangers of Radiation – providing details on the nature of the health risks and the evidence that current standards seriously underestimate these risks – The Ethics Press site provides a link https://eipcontents.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/master/samples/978-1-83711-586-0.pdf that allows you to read the first 30 pages of the book that provide a summary of what follows – worth a read that will I hope prompt you to order the book and recommend it to people in your networks
Proximity to nuclear power plants associated with increased cancer mortality
The study found that U.S. counties located closer to nuclear power plants experienced higher cancer mortality rates, even after accounting for socioeconomic, environmental, and health care factors. The researchers estimated that over the course of the study period, roughly 115,000 cancer deaths across the U.S. (or about 6,400 deaths per year) were attributable to proximity to NPPs.
By Maya Brownstein, February 23, 2026, https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/proximity-to-nuclear-power-plants-associated-with-increased-cancer-mortality/
Boston, MA—U.S. counties located closer to operational nuclear power plants (NPPs) have higher rates of cancer mortality than those located farther away, according to a new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The study is the first of the 21st century to analyze proximity to NPPs and cancer mortality across all NPPs and every U.S. county. The researchers emphasized that the findings are not enough to establish causality but do highlight the need for further research into nuclear power’s health impacts.
The study was published Feb. 23, 2026, in Nature Communications.
Numerous studies on the potential link between NPPs and cancer have been conducted around the world, with conflicting results. In the U.S., these studies have been rare and limited in their scope, focused on a single NPP and its surrounding community.
To expand the evidence base, the researchers conducted a national assessment of NPPs and cancer mortality between 2000 and 2018 using “continuous proximity.” They used advanced statistical modeling that captured the cumulative impact of all nearby NPPs, rather than just one. The locations and dates of operation of U.S. NPPs—as well as some nearby in Canada—were obtained from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and county-level data on cancer mortality was obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers controlled for potential confounders in each county, including educational attainment, median household income, racial composition, average temperature and relative humidity, smoking prevalence, BMI, and proximity to the nearest hospital.
The study found that U.S. counties located closer to nuclear power plants experienced higher cancer mortality rates, even after accounting for socioeconomic, environmental, and health care factors. The researchers estimated that over the course of the study period, roughly 115,000 cancer deaths across the U.S. (or about 6,400 deaths per year) were attributable to proximity to NPPs. The association was strongest among older adults.
“Our study suggests that living near a NPP may carry a measurable cancer risk—one that lessens with distance,” said senior author Petros Koutrakis, Akira Yamaguchi Professor of Environmental Health and Human Habitation. “We recommend that more studies be done that address the issue of NPPs and health impacts, particularly at a time when nuclear power is being promoted as a clean solution to climate change.”
The researchers noted that the results are consistent with the results of a similar study they conducted in Massachusetts, which identified elevated cancer incidence among populations living closer to NPPs.
They also noted some limitations to the study, including that it did not incorporate direct radiation measurements and instead assumed equal impact by all NPPs.
Article information
“National Analysis of Cancer Mortality and Proximity to Nuclear Power Plants in the United States,” Yazan Alwadi, Barrak Alahmad, Carolina L. Zilli Vieira, Philip J. Landrigan, David C. Christiani, Eric Garshick, Marco Kaltofen, Brent Coull, Joel Schwartz, John S. Evans, Petros Koutrakis, Nature Communications, February 23, 2026, doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-69285-4
Radiation Protection -worker and public health protection standards at risk.
The Military Connection.
For Australian workers and the public, the situation is complicated by and made more
urgent as a result of the Australia, UK, USA (AUKUS) agreement regarding the building and
stationing of nuclear-powered submarines in Australia. We have already seen the creation
of a separate Australian Naval Nuclear Power Standards Regulator (ANNPSR) that will be
responsible for all standards in the construction, operation, maintenance, decommissioning,
and radioactive waste management from the submarines built or stationed here. We can
expect pressure from the USA to have these standards align with those in the USA. As such
the ANNPSR could become a back door for pressuring the current standards agency
ARPANSA to revise and weaken rather than tighten protection standards across the full
range of other occupational and public radiation health risks.
Radiation Protection Standards
For most of the past century national and international standards agencies have regulated
radiation protection based on three fundamental principles.
1 A ”Linear No Threshold ‘ (LNT) model based on scientific evidence that indicates
there is no safe level of exposure. Any dose however small can be the one which can
cause cancer – sometimes taking years to develop – or genetic damage affecting
future generations.
2 That, therefore, all exposures should be kept ‘As Low As Reasonably Achievable’ –
known as the ALARA principle
3 And that exposures to workers and the public should be kept below specified annual limits.
The science behind this protection regime is based on the capacity of ionising radiation to
cause damage at the cellular level in the human body. Radiation striking a cell can either
cause no damage or it may kill the cell outright – in which case, unless too many cells are
killed at once, the body will eliminate the dead cells and function healthily. The problem
comes when the cell is merely damaged, and the natural process of repair is imperfect,
leaving the cell to replicate in this damaged form – which may in some cases lead to the kind
of growth we call a cancer, other long term health or genetic damage. The level of this kind
of damage (known as stochastic) is a hit-and-miss affair – a low level of radiation exposure
doesn’t determine a health effect but as the level of exposure increases, it increases the
probability of the damage.
Current Standards Need Tightening
The limits on exposure have been progressively tightened over the years as estimates of the
cancer risks, mainly drawn from the Life-Span Studies (LSS) of Japanese survivors of the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts in 1945, showed progressively higher rates of
this stochastic health damage. Recent evidence from studies of workers in the Nuclear
Industries in France the UK and USA (The INWORKS studies) suggest the worker-exposure
limits need to again be revised – and significantly tightened. In addition, studies on health of
populations living close to nuclear power plants in Europe and the USA show significantly
elevated rates of cancer in both children and the elderly directly related to living distance
from these facilities.
United States Proposals Would Weaken Current Standards
Unfortunately, it appears that the USA is headed in the opposite direction and given the
recent behaviour of the current President, may soon pressure other countries to follow suit.
In May 2025 US President Donald Trump issued a Directive (EO 14300) Instructing the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to revise all its regulations – in particular, to revise
those relating to radiation health and safety. He instructed the NRC to abandon the LNT
and ALARA principles and re-set limits on worker and public exposures based on ‘deterministic’ rather than ‘probabilistic’/’stochastic ‘ health outcomes – potentially allowing
much higher levels of exposure.
Exactly how the NRC will respond to these directives is unclear. To comply with the
president’s orders would put the USA in conflict with national and international agencies
such as the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP), the United Nations
Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), the US National Academy of
Science’s. Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (the BEIR committee)
and other countries’ national agencies including the Australian Radiation Protection and
Nuclear Standards Agency (ARPANSA) – all of which have recently reaffirmed commitment
to the LN and ARPANSA principles and the current annual limits on worker and public
exposure.
TThe draft of the revised NRC regulations on radiation protection is expected on 30 April
2026 with a 30-day period for comments before the final comprehensive revision of all NRC
regulations is published in November 2026.
An international Campaign
These US proposals have stimulated the beginnings of an international campaign bringing
together trade unions, environment and public health groups and communities concerned
about current and future exposures from mining, industrial, medical, and nuclear radiation
sources. The objectives of this campaign are two-fold:
1 To pressure national and international agencies with responsibility for radiation
protection to publicly repudiate any US regulations that align with the Trump
Directive and resist any pressures from the US to similarly weaken existing national
standards.
2. To build pressure on these national and international agencies to revise and tighten
the standards in line with the best available scientific evidence that the health risks
are greater than those used to set current standards.
The Military Connection
For Australian workers and the public, the situation is complicated by and made more
urgent as a result of the Australia, UK, USA (AUKUS) agreement regarding the building and
stationing of nuclear-powered submarines in Australia. We have already seen the creation
of a separate Australian Naval Nuclear Power Standards Regulator (ANNPSR) that will be
responsible for all standards in the construction, operation, maintenance, decommissioning,
and radioactive waste management from the submarines built or stationed here. We can
expect pressure from the USA to have these standards align with those in the USA. As such
the ANNPSR could become a back door for pressuring the current standards agency
ARPANSA to revise and weaken rather than tighten protection standards across the full
range of other occupational and public radiation health risks.
For further information
For references to the scientific evidence and to be kept informed of developments as this
campaign evolves contact:
Dr Tony Webb,
E-mail: webbt45@icloud.com,
Shrimp with a side of cancer? Radioactive contamination is real.
by Kimberly Roberson, opinion contributor – 01/18/26,
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5692924-fda-radioactive-shrimp-threat/
The specter of radioactivity in food just reared its head again, with another shipment of imported shrimp recalled for possible Cesium-137 contamination.
The MAHA Commission 2025 report unfotunately ignored radioactivity as a possible cause of rising cancer and chronic illness. But even leaving aside nuclear accidents, studies show living near nuclear plants elevates cancer risk. Nuclear reactors generate radioactive waste and ionizing radiation, which get into the environment, contaminating air, water, soil and food.
Harmful isotopes like Cesium-137 aren’t natural; they’re made only in reactors, but persist in the environment and food for centuries. Decades after Chernobyl, for instance, researchers found Cesium-137 in meat from domestic and game animals in Poland, and in food and children’s bodies in Belarus, which caused pediatric cardiovascular disease.
Cesium-137 has a 30-year half-life but remains dangerous for 300 years, especially when ingested or inhaled. It lodges in soft tissues inside the body, irradiating cells and increasing cancer risk, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even very low doses have been shown to cause cancer, renal pathology and other damage.
This summer, the Food and Drug Administration issued multiple health hazard warnings about Cesium-137 detected in imported Indonesian shrimp, triggering massive recalls and worried coverage in mainstream outlets like “Martha Stewart Living.” Consumer Reports found evidence a wide swath of Indonesia’s land may be contaminated.
U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-L.) and John Kennedy (R-La.) then launched an inquiry, asking grocery chains how they will keep radioactive shrimp off their shelves. Kennedy said that eating Cesium-137-laced shrimp “will kill you. Even if doesn’t turn you into the alien from ‘Alien,’ I guarantee you’ll grow another ear.” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) wrote to President Trump, calling radioactive shrimp a “significant public health threat” and asking him to pause all shrimp imports.
“Alien” shrimp penetrated public consciousness, but the radioactivity problem is much bigger. The FDA recently found radioactive cloves, and Malta customs officials found radioactive clothing, both contaminated with Cesium-137. The World Customs Organization launched “Operation Stingray” to intercept nuclear and radioactive materials, seizing 51 shipments in just three weeks.
Such action is overdue. Long before so-called “forever chemicals” or microplastics were recognized as health threats, watchdog groups were flagging the threat of radioactivity in food, especially after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. A 2013 FDA Citizen Petition demanded tighter regulation and lower allowable radioactivity levels. My organization has collected 1,600 comments and thousands of companion signatures.
Fears about radioactive fish surged in 2023 as Fukushima resumed dumping radioactive water into the Pacific. The FDA downplayed them, claiming “Cs-137 is readily excreted and does not accumulate in seafood.” But that’s a misdirection. The point is, it accumulates in our bodies when we ingest it, even in tiny amounts, according to the International Commission on Radiological Protection.
Health advocacy groups recently pointed this out in a joint letter, exhorting Kennedy and federal officials to “finally address the impact of radiation contamination of U.S. food on the trajectory of cancer and chronic illness by setting and enforcing much safer levels for Americans.” In its reply FDA demurred, calling it “unlikely that a fish exposed to significant levels of radionuclides near the [Fukushima] reactor could travel to U.S. waters and be caught and harvested.”
Yet we see evidence of consumer goods contaminated with radioactivity all around us. Instead of downplaying the problem, the FDA should tighten and enforce protective standards.
The Indonesian shrimp flagged as a health hazard had 68 becquerels of Cesium-137. The FDA’s “derived intervention level” — more of a guideline than an enforceable standard — is about 20 times higher, at 1,200 becquerels.
No level of Cesium-137 or other harmful radioactive isotopes is safe, yet Trump’s recent executive orders raise exposure limits and depart from the longstanding linear no-threshold model of radiation safety. Advocates warned the public health consequences would be severe, with women, children and fetuses worst impacted.
The standard should be, if Cesium-137 or other isotopes of concern are detectable in food items, they ought to be pulled off shelves, or at the very least labeled with warnings so consumers can make an informed decision. Unfortunately, that’s not the system we have. The importance of humility and transparency are among the lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima, but the Trump administration is ignoring them in an explosion of hubris.
That’s nothing new; it’s deep in the nuclear culture. That 2011 International Commission on Radiological Protection report states, “There may be situations where a sustainable agricultural economy is not possible without placing contaminated food on the market. As such foods will be subject to market forces, this will necessitate an effective communication strategy to overcome the negative reactions from consumers outside the contaminated areas.”
But a communications strategy designed to soft-pedal radioactive contamination of food won’t make America healthy. Only setting and enforcing science-based standards will.
Kimberly Roberson is director of the Fukushima Fallout Awareness Network, a project of the National Institute for Science, Law and Public Policy.
Residential proximity to nuclear power plants and cancer incidence in Massachusetts, USA (2000–2018)
18 December 2025, Springer Nature, Volume 24, article number 92, (2025)
“………………………………………. Results
Proximity to plants significantly increased cancer incidence, with risk declining by distance. At 2 km, females showed RRs of 1.52 (95% CI: 1.20–1.94) for ages 55–64, 2.00 (1.59–2.52) for 65–74, and 2.53 (1.98–3.22) for 75 + . Males showed RRs of 1.97 (1.57–2.48), 1.75 (1.42–2.16), and 1.63 (1.29–2.06), respectively. Cancer site-specific analyses showed significant associations for lung, prostate, breast, colorectal, bladder, melanoma, leukemia, thyroid, uterine, kidney, laryngeal, pancreatic, oral, esophageal, and Hodgkin lymphoma, with variation by sex and age. We estimated 10,815 female and 9,803 male cancer cases attributable to proximity, corresponding to attributable fractions of 4.1% (95% CI: 2.4–5.7%) and 3.5% (95% CI: 1.8–5.2%).
Conclusions
Residential proximity to nuclear plants in Massachusetts is associated with elevated cancer risks, particularly among older adults, underscoring the need for continued epidemiologic monitoring amid renewed interest in nuclear energy. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12940-025-01248-6
Finland detects small amount of radioactivity, sees no health impact
Armen Press 30th Jan 2026, original at https://armenpress.am/en/article/1240847
Small amounts of radioactive substances have been detected in air samples in Finland though there was no risk to public health, Reuters reported citing the country’s nuclear safety watchdog.
“The concentrations were very low and posed no risk to people or the environment,” the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) said in a statement, according to Reuters.
According to the report, STUK said that the radioactive substances did not originate from Finnish nuclear power plants, though it did not offer an explanation for their detection.
“In many cases, the source of the radioactive substances cannot be identified,” the agency said.
Finland, Sweden, Russia and the wider region have a number of nuclear power reactors.
President Trump’s radical attack on radiation safety.
By Daniel Hirsch, Haakon Williams, Cameron Kuta | October 15, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/10/president-trumps-radical-attack-on-radiation-safety/?variant=B&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Trump%20s%20attack%20on%20radiation%20safety&utm_campaign=20251009%20Thursday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29
In May, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders that, in part, require the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to consider dramatically weakening its radiation protection standard. If federal radiation limits are gutted in the manner urged by the president, the new standard could allow four out of five people exposed over a 70-year lifetime to develop a cancer they would not otherwise get.
Contesting the scientific consensus. Section 5(b) of the executive order—formally titled “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”—directs the NRC to issue a proposed “wholesale revision of its regulations and guidance documents,” including reconsideration of the agency’s “reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure.” The LNT model maintains that risk from radiation exposure is proportional to the dose: Even a tiny amount of radiation causes some small but real increased risk of cancer, and that risk goes up linearly as the dose increases.
While most Americans have doubtless never heard of the LNT model, it has been the bedrock of radiation exposure risk analysis for decades and forms the basis of public health protection from radiation. The LNT model is scientifically robust, supported by the longstanding and repeatedly affirmed determinations on low-dose radiation by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, virtually all international scientific bodies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the NRC itself.
Despite the LNT model’s long track record and the well-established body of scientific evidence upon which it is built, President Trump has unilaterally issued a presidential finding that this scientific consensus is wrong. His order could lead to LNT’s complete abandonment in a matter of months, posing a serious increase in the amount of radiation that industries and government agencies would be allowed to inflict upon the public.
If the NRC goes along with Trump’s assertion, the weakening of radiation protection standards would likely be extreme. Advocates of abandoning LNT have often asserted that low-dose radiation is harmless or even beneficial, and therefore, that the public health radiation limits should be hugely increased. In 2015, three petitions for rulemaking to the NRC proposed doing away with the LNT model and increasing allowable radiation exposures for everyone—including children and pregnant women—to 10 rem. (The Roentgen equivalent man (rem) is a unit of effective absorbed radiation in human tissue, equivalent to one roentgen of X-rays. One rem is equal to 0.01 Sievert in the international system of units.)
One petition to the NRC went so far as to ask, “Why deprive the public of the benefits of low-dose radiation?” The NRC strongly rejected the petitions in 2021, citing the conclusions of numerous scientific bodies that “[c]onvincing evidence has not yet demonstrated the existence of a threshold.
Low-level, or “low-dose,” radiation is generally defined as a dose range of 10 rem and below. However, “low dose” is something of a misnomer, as 10 rem is still relatively high. Even when doses are low, they nonetheless cause substantial harm when spread across a large population over time, especially for sensitive groups like children.
Raising radiation exposure limits. If President Trump’s executive order results in a new public radiation exposure limit of around 10 rem—the level LNT opponents often advocate—the increased health risks would be extraordinary. Longstanding radiation protection limits for members of the public are in the range of 10 to 100 millirem (0.01 to 0.1 rem) per year. A 10-rem limit would increase allowed exposures to radiation by factors of 100 to 1000—and so would increase the risk of cancer.
A single chest X-ray is about 2 millirem (0.002 rem) of radiation exposure. An annual limit of 10 rem would correspond to a person receiving a dose equivalent to 5,000 chest X-rays each year, from conception to death. Current official radiation risk estimates—adopted by EPA from the National Academies’ BEIR VII study on the health risks from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation—indicate that receiving 10 rem per year over a 70-year lifetime would result in about four out of every five people exposed getting a cancer they would not get otherwise.
Despite what opponents of the LNT model claim, there is no threshold at 10 rem below which there is no measurable health harm. A substantial body of scientific work has demonstrated significant negative health impacts well below 10 rem. Beginning in the 1950s, pioneering Oxford researcher Alice Stewart demonstrated that a single fetal X-ray with a dose of 200 millirem (0.2 rem) was associated with a measurable increase in the risk of that child dying of cancer. The radiation establishment fought Stewart’s findings vigorously, but her research has long since been vindicated.
More recently, a major study covering an international cohort of over 300,000 nuclear facility workers has found that annual doses well below 1 rem create measurable increases in the risk of developing a variety of cancers, and that, as NRC put it, “even tiny doses slightly boost the risk of leukemia.” A second massive study of nearly one million European children found that those who received a CT scan, at an average dose of 800 millirem (0.8 rem), suffered a measurable increase in their risk of getting cancer.
Standards already weak. Radiation protection standards should be tightened, not weakened. The US government has a long history of underestimating radiation risks. The more scientists have learned about low-dose radiation, the more their estimates of the risk per unit dose have tended to increase. Yet the NRC has not updated in step with the science.
The NRC protection limit for workers of 5 rem per year was set in the early 1960s and has not changed since, despite decades of increasing official estimates of radiation risk. The current best estimate, from the National Academies’ BEIR VII, indicates that one out of every five workers receiving the NRC’s allowable dose each year from ages 18 to 65 would develop a cancer.
NRC’s radiation exposure limits for the public have not been updated in 35 years. Despite a requirement to employ EPA’s more conservative radiation risk standards, the NRC has long ignored it and instead continues to use 100 millirem per year—100 times lower than what Trump’s executive order could lead to. Current risk figures from the National Academies and the EPA indicate that 70 years of exposure at that level would result in nearly one in 100 people getting cancer from that exposure. That is 100 to 10,000 times higher than the EPA’s acceptable risk range. As the former director of EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air said years ago, “To put it bluntly, radiation should not be treated as a privileged pollutant. You and I should not be exposed to higher risks from radiation sites than we should be from sites which had contained any other environmental pollutant.”
The NRC held a webinar in July to gather public feedback on implementing President Trump’s executive order on abolishing the LNT model. Many presenters—including representatives from the National Council on Radiation Protection and the Union of Concerned Scientists—gave a vigorous defense of the LNT model, as did many of the comments from the public. Yet the NRC, despite itself having strongly reaffirmed this standard only 4 years ago, seemed to minimize low-dose radiation risks and suggested that all radiation cancer risk models be treated equally (including the long-discredited view that low-dose radiation has health benefits). More concerning, the NRC has put its thumb on the scale, giving special treatment to LNT opposition by posting among the general meeting materials a link to one presenter’s paper, which suggests that an annual dose of 10 rem is acceptably safe.
At a time when radiation protection should be strengthened, President Trump has directed action to weaken it markedly. If the NRC implements the executive order, the potential outcome would be a new, deeply flawed radiation standard as much as a thousand times weaker than the current standard, resulting in a massive increase in radiation-related health hazards across the American population.
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.
HIGH LEVEL NUCLEAR WASTE REMAINS UNAPPROACHABLE AND EXTREMELY TOXIC FOR HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS
Gordon Edwards, 20 Jan 26
Q: When is irradiated nuclear fuel less radioactive than uranium ore?
A: Never!
Mark Twain once wrote, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” I would add to that short list many of the reassurances promulgated by nuclear enthusiasts. Take high-level nuclear waste for example.
Nuclear proponents often reassure the public and decision-makers that, after 10 million years or so, the high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors is more-or-less on a par with the original uranium ore found in nature from which the uranium fuel was extracted. Sounds reassuring, no doubt, but it is not true.
First of all, the language itself can be misleading. Many people may not realize that uranium ore is much more dangerously radioactive than uranium itself.
That’s because the ore is a mélange of uranium and its two dozen radioactive progeny, including isotopes of radium, polonium, and radon, as well as radioactive varieties of bismuth and lead. See www.ccnr.org/U-238_decay_chain.png & www.ccnr.org/U-235_decay_chain.png
Each one of these byproducts of uranium is much more radiotoxic (i.e.following ingestion or inhalation) than uranium itself. Indeed these pernicious radioactive poisons have already killed countless hundreds of thousands of humans exposed to them in one way or another.
Due to the presence of the radioactive progeny, uranium ore gives off a lot of highly penetrating gamma radiation (the principal cause of external whole-body irradiation) – far more than uranium itself. Pure uranium gives off very little gamma radiation.
Secondly, not all uranium ore is the same. Some ores are a lot more dangerous than others.
The potential health hazard of uranium ore depends on the “grade” of the ore. The grade is the concentration of uranium per gram of ore. The grade dictates the concentration of all of the radioactive progeny as well. So, the higher the grade, the more radioactive and the more radiotoxic the ore is.
At Cigar Lake in Northern Saskatchewan, for example, we have “high-grade” ore averaging about 17 percent uranium, which makes that ore more than 150 times more radioactive (and radiotoxic) than uranium ore from Elliot Lake Ontario (having a grade of about 0.1 percent).
The Cigar Lake ore is the richest (i.e. the highest grade) ever found. The ore is so radioactive that it cannot be safely mined by human beings, but must be mined using robotic equipment. See https://saskpolytech.ca/news/posts/2021/Cigar-Lake-project-collaboration-a-high-tech-home-grown-win.aspx .
But hold on a minute. Even after ten million years, the concentration of uranium left in spent fuel is about 98.5 percent. That is a MUCH higher grade than any ore ever found in nature.
So even after ten million years, used nuclear fuel is about 480 percent MORE radioactive and radiotoxic than the uranium ore at Cigar Lake – which is in turn more than 100 times more radioactive and radiotoxic than most other uranium deposits that have been mined in other countries. And that estimate is based ONLY on the uranium progeny mentioned above.
But that’s not all. In addition to uranium and its progeny, the ten-million-year-old CANDU used fuel bundles contain other radioactive poisons not found in uranium ore at all, such as caesium-135 (half-life 2.3 million years), iodine-129 (half-life 16 million years), palladium-107 (half-life 6.5 million years), and zirconium-93 (half-life 1.6 million years).
So when Canadian nuclear establishment people tell you that after 10 million years CANDU spent fuel is about as dangerous as naturally-occurring uranium ore, they are bending the truth by a significant amount. They are also misleading people by not explaining the difference between uranium ore and uranium in a refined form.
Incidentally, the Ontario Royal Commission on Electric Power Planning (commonly called the Porter Commission) published a graph in their 1978 Report “A Race Against Time” showing that the overall radiotoxicity of used CANDU fuel (the blue line in the graph) decreases for the first 50,000 years or so, and then increases to a higher level as the result of inbreeding of uranium progeny. Although it is not stated in the report, the radiotoxicity level of used nuclear fuel after ten million years does not change for a very long time – it remains relatively constant for the next several hundred millions of years.
Canada’s double standard on tritium emissions
Frank Greening, 24 Dec 25
Here is an example of how Canada allows all kinds of tritium emissions while other nations are criticized for almost trivial releases.
Thus, it was reported today that the Japanese reactor at Fugen had a leak that spilled tritiated water. The amount released? A staggering 20 ml:
By comparison a CANDU reactor at Bruce NGS suffered a steam generator release back in 2007. Steam generator tube leaks involve the escape of primary heat transport heavy water contaminated with tritium. In the case of Bruce Unit 8, a steam generator leak was detected in June 2007 but was allowed to continue until the first week of November. The monthly heavy water losses associated with this leak were as follows:
June 2007: 484 kg
July 2007: 2157 kg
Aug 2007: 2832 kg
Sept 2007: 4339 kg
Oct 2007: 5036 kg
Nov 2007: 1115 kg
Thus, in total, 15,963 kg of tritiated heavy water was lost to Lake Huron over a six-month period in 2007. This leak created a giant plume of tritiated water that was carried northwards by the prevailing currents towards the townships of Saugeen Shores, Port Elgin and Southampton. By September 2007, the concentration of tritium in the water intake of the Port Elgin Water Treatment Plant, 17 km north of the Bruce site, had increased by more than a factor of three compared to the normal levels of tritium in lake water at this location.
But remarkably this increase in the tritium concentration in the drinking water supply to residents to the north of the Bruce site was not the reason that the Unit 8 steam generator leak was finally fixed. On the contrary, the leak was plugged to prevent further loss of a valuable commodity – heavy water – which at $300/kg had already cost Bruce Power almost $5 million. And besides, thanks to the CNSC’s lax tritium emission standards, Bruce B’s waterborne emission action level for tritium is a staggering 130,000 Ci per month; thus the station was well below its regulatory limit in this regard. Nevertheless, one has to wonder how such a liberal action level is permitted when it allows a station to discharge tritiated water that is 5000 times higher than the Ontario Drinking Water Objective.
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