President Trump’s radical attack on radiation safety (The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)
Over the summer, CBG staffers Haakon Williams and Cam Kuta put the finishing touches on an article they’d been writing with Dan, for hopeful publication in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, about the implications of President Trump’s May executive order directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to consider weakening its standards to allow Americans to be exposed to higher levels of radiation. This article followed a presentation on the subject that Dan gave to the NRC in July, just three days before his death. In October, the Bulletin published our article.
“In May, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders that, in part, require the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to consider dramatically weakening its radiation protection standard. If federal radiation limits are gutted in the manner urged by the president, the new standard could allow four out of five people exposed over a 70-year lifetime to develop a cancer they would not otherwise get.
Contesting the scientific consensus. Section 5(b) of the executive order—formally titled “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission”—directs the NRC to issue a proposed “wholesale revision of its regulations and guidance documents,” including reconsideration of the agency’s “reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure.” The LNT model maintains that risk from radiation exposure is proportional to the dose: Even a tiny amount of radiation causes some small but real increased risk of cancer, and that risk goes up linearly as the dose increases.
While most Americans have doubtless never heard of the LNT model, it has been the bedrock of radiation exposure risk analysis for decades and forms the basis of public health protection from radiation. The LNT model is scientifically robust, supported by the longstanding and repeatedly affirmed determinations on low-dose radiation by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, virtually all international scientific bodies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the NRC itself.”