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Nuclear regulator prepares to abandon decades-old radiation safety rule
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"Removing it would remove that incentive for these companies to continue to maintain the practices that protected their workers and the public," said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group.
In its public meeting on the proposed change earlier this month, the NRC said it envisioned the dose limit extension would be used sparingly for things like reactor refueling and upgrades at nuclear power plants. "At high radiation doses, nobody's really arguing radiation causes cancer," said David Brenner, director the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University.
"Keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable was a fair idea," said Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Then last May, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a wholesale overhaul of nuclear regulations.
Caffrey said she's comfortable with eliminating the squishy ALARA principle and asking the industry to stick to the numbers already in the regulations: "You should have a number because 'reasonable' is too loosey-goosey.
"As you go down in dose, what you're looking for is a very small increase in cancer risk over a very large background," Brenner said. Removing ALARA will especially help the design of new smaller reactors that could power some of these applications, Nieh said.
He said getting rid of it is part of a sweeping overhaul of many NRC rules as required by President Trump's executive order. That uncertainty would make it hard for drivers, and similarly ALARA is making it hard for reactor designers, Nieh argued.
It also created ambiguity, Caffrey said, "because what's 'reasonable' to one person isn't reasonable to another person. Speaking this week on the Federal News Network, NRC Chairman Ho Nieh said that ALARA is no longer working.
What's confirmed
What's still developing
- "Keeping doses as low as reasonably achievable was a fair idea," said Emily Caffrey, a radiation health physicist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
- It also created ambiguity, Caffrey said, "because what's 'reasonable' to one person isn't reasonable to another person.
- "Removing it would remove that incentive for these companies to continue to maintain the practices that protected their workers and the public," said Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of…
- "At high radiation doses, nobody's really arguing radiation causes cancer," said David Brenner, director the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University.
- "As you go down in dose, what you're looking for is a very small increase in cancer risk over a very large background," Brenner said.
- Then last May, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a wholesale overhaul of nuclear regulations.
- Speaking this week on the Federal News Network, NRC Chairman Ho Nieh said that ALARA is no longer working.
- That uncertainty would make it hard for drivers, and similarly ALARA is making it hard for reactor designers, Nieh argued.
Sources
- NPR — source text fetched for this pass link