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?

  • Serinus
    31·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • chuckleslord
      11·
      2 days ago

      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.