Trump Administration Plans to Relax Radiation Limits to Quadruple Nuclear Power Generation

With electricity demand skyrocketing due to the rise of data centers and artificial intelligence (AI), U.S. President Trump has set a goal to quadruple domestic nuclear power generation. Last year, he issued an executive order directing federal agencies to adopt 'science-based radiation limits' to accelerate nuclear reactor development. In this context, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which oversees civilian nuclear energy and radioactive materials, is considering eliminating a key safety principle followed for 50 years—the 'As Low As Reasonably Achievable' (ALARA) principle.

Under the current system, all facilities involving radioactive materials—including nuclear power plants, hospitals, and academic research institutions—must strictly adhere to the ALARA principle, ensuring that human radiation exposure remains at the 'lowest level reasonably achievable.' For decades, the ALARA principle has operated alongside the 'legal radiation dose limits': the limits define the maximum radiation dose acceptable for the public and workers, while ALARA requires further reduction of unnecessary exposure below those limits. Research data shows that radiation exposure increases cancer risk, with the probability rising as the dose increases.

In the NRC's new proposal, the legal radiation dose limits remain unchanged, but the ALARA principle will be formally abolished and replaced with a 'graded approach.' This mechanism categorizes management measures based on workers' potential radiation exposure risk; only when doses approach the legal limit will the strictest protective controls be enforced to prevent overexposure. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has already ceased applying the ALARA principle, and the NRC expects to finalize revisions to radiation protection regulations within the coming months.

Regarding this change, NRC Chair Ho Nieh emphasized that the commission has no intention of lowering safety standards. 'We are simply eliminating regulatory ambiguity,' Nieh stated during a media conference call. 'The exposure standards for workers and the general public remain completely unchanged—we are merely providing clearer guidelines.' He estimated that the impact on existing large traditional nuclear reactors would be limited, but clearer protection rules would significantly shorten development timelines for companies designing and constructing new small modular reactors (SMRs).

The NRC further explained that the current legal dose limits are already far below levels harmful to health, and since higher radiation intensity in work environments increases both costs and time for area control and monitoring, operators have strong incentives to keep doses well below the limits. Doug True, Chief Nuclear Officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), also expressed support, stressing that the industry will continue to voluntarily reduce worker exposure and maintain off-site public doses at the lowest levels possible. 'We won’t just open the gates and let radiation levels soar up to the limit,' he said. Justin Friedman, former U.S. State Department nuclear energy advisor, noted that the ALARA principle had often served as a 'moving target' in regulatory reviews, and its elimination would allow NRC scientists to make more rational decisions when managing controllable risks.

However, this reform has raised concerns among left-leaning experts and environmental groups. Edwin Lyman, Director of the Nuclear Safety Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), warned that some proposed revisions could effectively relax allowable radiation doses in specific situations without exceeding legal limits. For example, regarding radioactive nuclide emission standards, the annual radiation dose limit for the general public is 100 millirem (a chest X-ray delivers about 10 millirem). The NRC proposal aims to relax the emission dose standard for hypothetical residents at nuclear plant boundaries from the current conservative 10 millirem per year to 25 millirem. While the NRC argues that in reality, people live farther away and dispersion through air and water keeps exposure far below this level, Lyman insists that the ALARA principle should be improved, not abolished, and criticized it as now being a political target.

Katy Huff, former Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy and now a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, acknowledged that the term 'reasonable' in ALARA had indeed been difficult to enforce in past regulatory practice, and that clearer standards would help improve the regulatory environment. However, she had expected the NRC to only clearly define the scope of 'reasonable,' rather than completely abandon the principle.

Kathryn Higley, Chair of the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), pointed out from an overall risk management perspective that excessive pursuit of ALARA can sometimes backfire. For instance, if nuclear plant workers wear full heavy protective gear and respirators to comply with ALARA when entering radiation zones, their slowed movement could lead to heat exhaustion or other serious physiological harm—risks potentially greater than those from minimal radiation exposure. However, Higley also cautioned that the proposal maintains the annual occupational dose limit of 5 rem (5,000 millirem) for adult nuclear workers. Under previous ALARA controls, actual average worker doses were far below this level. The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) recommends an annual average occupational dose limit of only 2 rem. If the U.S. fully eliminates ALARA, it may need to reconsider adjusting this limit to align with international standards.