Multiple environmental groups have publicly denounced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposal to change radiation protection standards, saying the proposal would loosen protections at the risk of the public.
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.
On Monday, the Coalition to Stop Radioactive Pollution, made up of several environmental and nuclear watchdog groups, launched a campaign called “Protect Better”. This campaign aims to “demand better protection from ionizing radiation for all Americans,” according to its press release.
The coalition said NRC ALARA rulemaking and President Donald Trump’s nuclear-related executive orders have sought to weaken radiation standards in order to accelerate the expansion of nuclear power. The Protect Better campaign is intended to help raise awareness of these “growing radioactive dangers” and encourage people to safeguard public health, through commenting on the upcoming rulemaking.
“Last year a coalition of groups wrote to the NRC and other agency heads expressing our concerns about the executive orders fast-tracking nuclear projects and rolling back regulation, citing research that documents harms from radiation exposure,” Brian Campbell, executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said.
“The new proposed NRC rule ignores those concerns. Among other things, it throws out the established scientific basis for setting radiation dose limits and allows nuclear owners to apply to raise limits for exposures they cause…we will fight these rollbacks and demand protective standards based on the best science,” Campbell finished.
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) also took issue with NRC’s proposed rule in a separate instance.
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 also urged the public members to express their concerns when the rulemaking’s comment period opens up.