From CFACT
By Duggan Flanakin|
When Secretary of Energy Chris Wright on January 12 announced that the DOE had ended the use of the “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA) principle for radiation safety directives and regulations, he was following both a directive from President Trump and a recommendation by scientists at the Idaho National Laboratory.
President Trump, in Executive Order EO 14300, criticized ALARA and the linear no-threshold (LNT) model on which it is based, stating, “Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results, such as requiring that nuclear plants protect against radiation below naturally occurring levels.”
While the DOE has now complied with the President’s wishes, the same cannot yet be said about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where the ALARA principle outlined in Part 20 of its rules is still in force. Mind you, the NRC began considering changes to Part 53 of its regulations, which address risk for advanced reactors, during President Trump’s first term in 2019.
By late 2022, the draft regulations released a draft Part 53 rule, and, sure enough, the ALARA principle was required for the total effective dose equivalent (TEDE) design features and programmatic controls; in fact, the functional design criteria for occupational dose ALARA seemed to be a significant expansion of then-current ALARA requirements into design space.
That proposal did not satisfy the nuclear industry and its proponents. A Breakthrough Institute report asserted a broad stakeholder consensus that the NRC was “applying the same baroque licensing and regulatory framework that has so hobbled the legacy nuclear industry for decades to advanced nuclear technologies.”
What the stakeholders had wanted as a Part 53 rule that was predictable, flexible, enabled innovation, and scalable. The rule should, they said, provide an innovative approach to licensing that is technology-inclusive, risk-informed, and performance-based. It should be transformational, not iterative, of existing licensing pathways.
Among their many recommendations was to “remove the ALARA standard from all design requirements of the Part 53 framework.”
In short, ALARA was a bad idea when introduced in 1971, and a worse idea now.
But the Part 53 rule revisions requested by stakeholders did not get adopted in 2023. Instead, a revised draft was approved on March 4, 2024; the initial public comment period extended until February 28, 2025. Now the NRC staff is predicting a draft final rule by May 1. But it could be 2028 before the final rule is actually in effect.
Can/should Americans have to wait that long, given the urgency of doubling electricity generation within the next few years? And will the final rules remove the ALARA mandate?
A July 2025 report from Idaho National Laboratory recommended that the current U.S. annual occupational dose limit of 5,000 millirems be maintained WITHOUT applying ALARA below that threshold. According to the report, epidemiological studies “have consistently failed to demonstrate statistically significant health effects at doses below 10,000 mrem/year with appropriate cumulative-dose constraints.”
The report further stated that increasing the public dose limit from 100 to 500 mrem/year “would maintain a substantial safety margin while better aligning with scientific evidence and enabling more cost-effective implementation of beneficial nuclear technologies across energy, healthcare, and industrial sectors.”
In short, the 55-year-old NRC regulations had always been over-restrictive by a long shot – based on the contorted viewpoint that even one microrem of radiation (far below ambient levels) cannot be allowed. No wonder President Trump complained that “a myopic policy of minimizing even trivial risks ignores the reality that substitute forms of energy production also carry risk, such as pollution with potentially deleterious health effects.”
The INL report concluded that “rather than claiming scientific certainty where none exists, aligning radiation protection standards with current scientific understanding represents a prudent step toward realizing these benefits while maintaining appropriate safety margins for workers and the public while acknowledging that some level of scientific and policy debate will likely persist.”
There were, of course, plenty of naysayers. The American Nuclear Society’s own “expert advisory group” concluded that the NRC and other federal agencies should focus on applying the ALARA principle in the manner it was originally intended rather than reignite “an esoteric scientific debate.” Doing otherwise, they claimed, would undermine the credibility of the regulatory process and the industry.
But that principle has hampered the U.S. nuclear industry – as it was designed to do – for over half a century, so much so that the U.S. had approved only two new nuclear powerplants in the 21st Century as of the date President Trump reassumed office.
Nano Nuclear Energy CEO James Walker says ending reliance on ALARA will help novel technologies, such as fast reactors, reactors using more novel coolants and novel fuels, because proving these components are ALARA-level “safe” is expensive and time consuming. In short, the change will help out companies in developing their designs and technologies.
A recent Breakthrough Institute report found that revising the NRC’s radiation protection standards could significantly reduce the cost of designing, constructing, and operating nuclear power plants while still providing ample margins of safety. Keeping the same standards would unnecessarily limit nuclear energy’s benefits to society.
We’re not talking chump change. Breakthrough says potential cost reductions for new nuclear construction, across a range of nuclear deployment scenarios through 2050, range from $200 million to $40 billion – depending on the extent of reactor deployment and the degree to which designs are adapted to revised standards. But more than money, the time saved from proving ALARA enables plants to go online sooner – and bringing return on investment sooner as well.
ALARA is now gone from the Energy Department’s rules. The NRC’s intransigence is proving costly and threatens U.S. energy security. Meanwhile, other nations are permitting and constructing new nuclear power plants while the NRC is taking forever to join the 21st Century.
This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy
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