The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s latest rulemaking on radiation safety protection has weakened the government’s “long-standing radiation protection standards for workers, the public and the environment.”
On July 1, NRC released the proposed new rulemaking that will do away with the “as low as reasonably achievable” – or ALARA radiation protection standard. ALARA is the principle that everything reasonably possible should be done to lower radiation exposure and has been used by the nuclear industry for over 50 years.
UCS said in a July 2 press release NRC’s potential move away from ALARA, while maintaining Linear No Threshold (LNT), is a move toward less cautious and more speculative standards. The LNT model is a safety standard that assumes any dose of ionizing radiation, no matter how low, increases cancer risk proportionally.
The organization said the NRC has no practical or technical basis for changing the LNT model and the akin ALARA principle.
“Elimination of ALARA would be a major blow to decades of good practice in radiation safety in the United States and could result in increased radiation exposures for people working in the nuclear energy, weapons production or waste cleanup industries, among others,” UCS said.
The organization also said NRC “bent” to political pressure in creating this rulemaking as Executive Order 14300 ordered the agency to reconsider its reliance on the LNT model and ALARA principle.
With no safe level of radiation exposure, Edwin Lyman of UCS said NRC’s elimination of ALARA would permit nuclear facility workers and the public to expose themselves to higher levels of “cancer-causing radiation just to save the nuclear industry money.”
“Cancer rates are already rising among younger people, and this change can only increase the risk,” Lyman said.
NRC Chair Ho Nieh said last week during a media roundtable that the pivot is rooted in moving away from an “open-ended subjective framework” and towards more clarity in the new rulemaking.
UCS urged the public members to express their concerns when the rulemaking’s comment period opens up.