The Trump administration is reportedly reconsidering a decades-old nuclear radiation standard in a bid to accelerate the construction of power plants.
Proponents of the overhaul argue that the radiation guardrails have become overly stringent and are making it too costly to build new reactors. But the idea of allowing greater radiation exposure could spook some members of the public.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reconsidering its reliance on a guiding principle known as ALARA, meaning “as low as reasonably achievable,” which requires nuclear reactors to take steps to reduce radiation exposure even below the limits established for worker safety.
Those legal limits, which are separate from ALARA, are set and enforced by the NRC. Radiation exposure for workers is capped at 5 rem per year, and for the general public at 100 millirem, a thousandth of a rem. Rem — a roentgen equivalent man — is the unit used to measure the biological effect of radiation on the human body, not just the amount of radiation itself.
For reference, the average natural exposure in the United States — just from cosmic, soil, and rock radiation, and similar factors — is around 300 millirem per year. For a higher-elevation city such as Denver, the exposure could be around 400 millirem per year.
The NRC is discussing a proposal to end ALARA, sources told E&E News earlier this month, and instead rely on existing hard threshold exposure limits for nuclear operators and medical workers. And those cutoffs, in turn, could be raised.
ALARA rollback for nuclear growth
Such a proposal would align with the Trump administration’s goal of expanding nuclear energy and building 10 new large reactors by 2030.
President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders last May aimed at accelerating the expansion of nuclear energy. As part of the orders, the president directed the NRC to reconsider its reliance on ALARA, calling it “flawed.”
It directed the NRC to reconsider its reliance on the linear no-threshold model, the scientific assumption that all radiation exposure, no matter how small, poses a risk of harm. That model has led to the ALARA standard.
In practice, the ALARA standard is the one that a nuclear developer would have to worry about.
Under the guidelines, plants must follow recommendations for facility layout, the use of tools and robotics for remote handling, ventilation, decontamination facilities, monitoring systems, and more. Those directions make it much more costly to build a plant.
And in practice, those rules have driven radiation exposure far below what the thresholds would otherwise allow. In 2022, 58% of monitored individuals at commercial light-water reactors did not receive
any measurable dose, and none received a dose greater than 3,000 mrem, according to an NRC report.
In other words, if ALARA were eliminated, nuclear developers would be freed from significant regulations. And if the threshold limits on radiation exposure were also raised, they would see further cost reductions.
The Department of Energy, which also uses ALARA as a guiding principle for its own reactors, has already taken action. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued a memo earlier this year approving the end of ALARA to “reduce the economic and operational burden on nuclear energy while aligning with available scientific evidence.”
DOE’s actions would apply only to its own reactors, whereas an NRC rule would affect the entire industry.
The NRC told the Washington Examiner in a statement that, “We continue to work on new rulemaking in accordance with EO 14300, and public health and safety will always be our top priority. Our work at this point is predecisional.”
Concerns over subjectivity of ALARA
Steven Biegalski, chairman of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Nuclear and Radiological Engineering program, said the issue with ALARA is that the term “reasonable” is subjective and can be interpreted as “as low as possible.”
Biegalski said the administration is “moving to remove the subjective ALARA principle, which has had non-uniform application across the field.”
He added that the effect of extremely low levels of radiation on humans has not been measured or quantified. Biegalski said that the regulatory process has been implemented at “very conservative measures.”
“Those conservative measures weren’t implemented because there was any evidence there was harm of radiation at those levels, in fact, there was no evidence,” Biegalski said. “But through an abundance of caution and being conservative in our regulatory environment, rules were implemented, and for my entire career, for the last half a century, people have worked well under those rules.”
‘Good housekeeping’
Kathryn Higley, president of the National Council on Radiation Protection, described ALARA as a form of “good housekeeping,” in which reasonable steps are taken to lower radiation doses and releases, as long as the efforts remain practical.
Even if ALARA is terminated by the NRC, Higley told the Washington Examiner, the industry may still find it useful to ensure that workers’ exposure does not exceed the limits. She noted that U.S. radiation limits are higher than those of some other countries, but in practice, U.S. workers are exposed to radiation levels well below those limits.
She said that the application of ALARA is part of the reason worker doses are so far below the limits, and the U.S. has not needed to adopt international standards.
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“If you completely obliterate ALARA and companies don’t employ it then it wouldn’t surprise me to see worker doses creep back up,” Higley said. “We’re trying to make sure that radiation workers that the risks that they take are considered equivalent to other relatively safe industries.”
