The Department of Energy last week denied it has done away with long-time radiation safety standards as reported by a Washington, D.C.-based publication earlier this month.
In a Friday Jan. 16 email reply to Exchange Monitor, a DOE spokesperson denied an earlier report by Politico’s E&E News that Secretary of Energy Chris Wright was ending DOE’s longstanding use of the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) principle for limiting radiation exposure.
“As of now, ALARA standards have not been removed or modified,” the DOE spokesperson said in the email. The Department of Energy remains committed to the highest standards of safety for workers and communities.”
That said President Trump’s May 2025 executive order on “Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission” did order reconsideration by NRC of the “linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the “as low as reasonably achievable” standard, which is predicated on LNT,” according to the order. “Those models are flawed,” the order said, stipulated NRC should consult with DOE, the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency.
A July 2025 report from the Idaho National Laboratory suggested that cost-benefit analysis should play a bigger role in the worker radioactive protection standard.
“ALARA means avoiding exposure to radiation that does not have a direct benefit to you, even if the dose is small,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. “To do this, you can use three basic protective measures in radiation safety: time, distance, and shielding.”
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website, ALARA calculations take into account “the state of technology, the economics of improvements in relation to state of technology, the economics of improvements in relation to benefits to the public health and safety, and other societal and socioeconomic considerations.”