As Trump boosts nuclear power, regulators seek to eliminate a longstanding radiation safety rule
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- NRC proposes eliminating the ALARA principle, a 50-year-old standard adopted globally that requires nuclear, hospital, and academic facilities to keep radiation exposures "as low as reasonably achievable"
- Maximum radiation dose limits remain unchanged; NRC would replace ALARA with a "graded approach" that triggers more rigorous protections as workers approach those caps
- NRC also seeks to raise its radionuclide emissions standard from 10 to 25 millirem per year, while keeping the 100 millirem annual public exposure cap in place
- Trump has ordered the agency via executive order to "adopt science-based radiation limits" as part of his push to quadruple U.S. nuclear power to meet surging electricity demand from AI and data centers
- The Energy Department has already stopped using ALARA; NRC Chairman Ho Nieh says the commission expects to finalize new regulations in the coming months
- The Nuclear Energy Institute industry trade group backs the change; Union of Concerned Scientists' Edwin Lyman warns permissible doses could rise in specific cases even while staying under the cap
Why it matters: Workers and communities near nuclear facilities could face higher permissible radiation exposures under the "graded approach" even though dose caps stay put—ALARA is the rule that historically kept real-world doses well below those caps. The shift aligns with Trump's executive order to accelerate reactor development and follows the Energy Department already abandoning ALARA, signaling a broader federal pivot away from the precautionary standard.
