Antinuclear

Two pieces of news re Radiation and Health

Tony Webb , Feb 26, 2026 

1. Today saw release of a report prepared for the US Department of Energy that will, alongside others from US agencies like OSHA,  be feeding into the US NRC review of radiation Protection Standards mandated by the Trump Directive (EO 24300) issued in May last year.   The NRC draft of revised regulations on Radiation Safety is expected 30 April 2026. The attached report to the US DoE – with particular significance for radiation safety for workers in and populations living close to  nuclear power reactors – gives a clear indication of how this process is likely to result in significant weakening of protection standards  

In summary it advocates 

• abandoning the Linear No Threshold and As low as Reasonably Achievable principles that offer some protection at low levels of exposure  based on the principle that there is no safe level of exposure 
• resetting the annual occupational exposure limit to 100 mSv – a doubling of the current US standard of 50mSv and a five-fold increase in the 20mSv annual occupational standard that applies in most other countries including Australia
• raising the public exposure limit from 1 mSv to 5 mSv 

I think we can expect other US agencies to  submit similar reports 

2. As previous posts on this issue have noted these proposals to weaken radiation protection for workers and the public come at a time when the evidence is mounting from studies of workers and communities exposed to radiation releases in and from Nuclear power pants for a revision that would tighten the current standards.  Today saw the release of a new book  by Ian Fairlie  – The Dangers of Ionising Radiation: A Scientific Guide to Radiation Risks for Government Agencies, Legal Professionals and Medical Clinicians  has just been published (Ethics International Press. 2026)  https://ethicspress.com/products/the-dangers-of-ionising-radiation  As anticipated this updates much of the earlier work in Ian Fairlie and Cindy  Folkers book – 

The Scientists Who Alerted Us To The Dangers of Radiation – providing details on the nature of the health risks and the evidence that current standards seriously underestimate these risks   –  The Ethics Press site provides a link   https://eipcontents.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/master/samples/978-1-83711-586-0.pdf     that allows you to read the first 30 pages of the book that provide a summary of what follows – worth a read  that will I hope prompt you to order the book and recommend it to people in your networks 

March 4, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health