The White House wants to get rid of a radiation safety rule that is over 50 years old and has been adopted by other countries.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is looking at eliminating the “as low as reasonably achievable” principle, which mandates that hospitals, nuclear plants, and other facilities keep radiation levels at an absolute minimum, even when they are already below legal limits. The rule would be replaced with a “graded approach” that puts different safety measures in place based on expected radiation exposure levels.
The legal limits for workers and the public would stay the same, and the NRC said that the public would not be any less safe.
“We’re just removing the ambiguity,” NRC Chair Ho Nieh said. “But the standard for exposure to workers and the public, those are not changing. We’re just putting in place greater clarification.”
The nuclear industry is in favor of the move, with its main trade association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, claiming that safety is still a priority.
If safety is a priority, why are you in favor of eliminating a rule that promotes safety?
This isn’t a rule that promotes safety. It’s a rule that assuages the fears of anti-nuclear activists with no meaningful difference between this and other standards in terms of danger. “As low as reasonably achievable” means that even if there is seemingly no return from a safety perspective, you still need to reduce not just radiation emission, but exposure time. It assumes that radiation is lifetime accumulating and that there is no safe level of radiation exposure, even though that doesn’t match the science.
Say, for instance, you have a nuclear reactor that exposes employees to the same amount of radiation from having a banana in their pocket during work hours would. There is a new type of radiation shielding that can be retrofitted to the reactor to reduce that by 10x. There is already no danger due to radiation exposure. ALARA states that you should undergo the retrofit, since it is possible to reduce the level of exposure, even though there is no difference in danger between now and that hypothetical future where you have the new shielding.
It assumes that radiation is lifetime accumulating and that there is no safe level of radiation exposure
… isn’t that true though?
“Safe” is relative. Any radiation exposure has a small chance to cause cancer. We consider a few x-rays not harmful, but just because the chance is generally worth taking for the results.
It’s the reason the person taking the X-ray is behind lead or a wall.
Yes, that is the way that the entire industry, from X-ray machines to NASA astronauts, is run. ALARA and the Linear No Threshold model are standard in the industry. The issue is that the science disagrees with the need to take those extreme precautions.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2663584/
Basically, ALARA and Linear No Threshold assumes that radiation is a novel danger and we must treat it as though our bodies have no mechanism for dealing with it. But our living world is absolutely steeped in radiation and we have obvious biological responses to those threats as a result. Like getting sunburnt. The sun didn’t burn you, your skin cells voluntarily told your body to kill them because they were irradiated. We also have less extreme mechanisms of DNA repair for lower doses. Meaning there is actually a minimum dose needed for you to be in any kind of danger.
People praising this don’t read “as reasonablly” clause. There’s already wiggle room and political/economic climate involved in how to implement (also, ALARA is not only covering sub microSv/yr realm where background Radiation is about). Moving away from it can certainly loosen the grip in the future, likely at the expence of onsite workers.
The old rule depends on all radiation being harmful. The science is that low levels of radiation are harmless and perhaps even beneficial. The new rule recognizes the science.
There are cities, Tehran is an example, where the background radiation is higher than what workers are allowed to be exposed to. These locations do not have elevated cancer rates.
The old standard causes harm. There are many cases of elderly Japanese people who suffered greatly, even died, because they were evacuated from their homes to protect them from developing cancer in 40 years.
No.
TL;DR from the article for anyone wondering why.
President Trump wants four times as much domestic nuclear energy production to satisfy the growing electricity demand from new data centers powering artificial intelligence. He issued four executive orders in May last year to boost government funding for nuclear power and overhaul nuclear regulations. In doing so, though, the president may get rid of some guardrails that protect Americans from the downsides of nuclear energy.
This is strangely a good thing. Current regulations are based on atomic bomb explosions and don’t correctly account for natural and background radiation.
The old reg used a cumulative model which is Obama since all life on earth evolved with radiation exposure. The new regulation should reduce construction and operation costs while making no difference in cancer or radiation related deaths.
A trans Atlantic or Pacific flight already exposes average people to more than the nrc is talking about here and we don’t even think twice about that exposure.
Thanks Obama.
Anyone interested night want to check out Kyle hills video about “linear no threshold” data. Kind of fascinating.
It’s incredible to witness a country devolving at the speed of light entirely due to a few dozen madmen, and everybody is quietly waiting for the next election, thinking they’re gonna win it and reverse the damage, when (1) the damage is already irreversible and (2) the election most likely won’t happen.
Safety actually is their priority. The safety of their bank accounts
