Antinuclear

Labor pledged to ban nuclear weapons in opposition. In government it got a reality check

ABC News, By Angus Grigg, 3 Nov 25

Anthony Albanese said the stakes could not be higher.

Banning nuclear weapons, he told delegates at the 2018 ALP National Conference, was the “most important struggle for the human race”.

It was Albanese the activist, showing himself to be a politician of conviction, as he implored the Labor Party to pass a resolution in support of a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

“Labor in government will sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” he told the party faithful

“This resolution is Labor at our best.”

The resolution was passed unanimously, but after almost four years in power Labor is yet to honour its promise of signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

At the National Conference that day in Adelaide, it was Richard Marles who seconded the resolution, albeit with far less passion, saying the treaty was “something we can all agree on”.

But in an interview with Four Corners, the now Deputy Prime Minister has stepped back from this commitment.

Asked why Labor had yet to sign the treaty, he said: “What’s really clear is that the [national] conference understands that this is a decision of government … a decision of Labor in government.”

“The decision that Labor has made in government has been to follow the non-proliferation treaty.”

While complementary to the nuclear weapons ban treaty, the NPT is something entirely different.

It was ratified by the Whitlam government in 1973 and seeks to limit the number of nuclear-armed states rather than put a prohibition on nuclear weapons.

When asked if Labor was still planning to sign the ban treaty, Marles reiterated that the Party “is pursuing the NPT”.

He denied it was a broken election promise, saying the words adopted by the National Conference meant the Labor government would make the final “decision” on signing the treaty.

That was not the impression Albanese gave the National Conference in 2018.

“Progress always requires leadership,” Albanese told the party faithful.

For an extra injection of political theatre that day, Albanese held up a Nobel Peace Prize medal, awarded in 2017 to Australian advocacy group ICAN for its work on the so-called ban treaty.

All this begs the question: why hasn’t the Albanese government signed the ban treaty?

Managing our alliances

The major stumbling block here is Australia’s alliance with the US.

Australia plays a small but crucial role in the US’s nuclear weapons program through defence facilities at Pine Gap and North West Cape, which provide early warning communications and targeting information.

Australia also seeks protection under America’s so-called “nuclear umbrella”, where the US agrees to protect some of its allies. This would be prohibited by the ban treaty.

Another obstacle is some of the language in the latest Defence Strategic Review, which says Australia’s best protection against the risk of nuclear escalation was the “United States’ extended nuclear deterrence”.

Albanese and Marles both clearly understood these issues back in 2018, when they were burnishing their anti-nuclear credentials with the left of the party.

Albanese even addressed such concerns in his speech.

“I am a very strong supporter of our alliance with the United States,” he told the conference.

“The fact is that we can disagree with our friends in the short term, while maintaining those relations.”

He cited the treaty to ban landmines, which Australia signed despite US opposition.

“The United States and many other countries that ended up supporting it today were hostile to the idea,” he said.

The new frontier

The problem for Albanese and Marles is that Australia is at a point in the geopolitical cycle where we are leaning into our alliance with the US, not pulling back.

Anxious that President Donald Trump will abandon the region, Australia is looking for ways to accommodate the US alliance.

That will see the US nuclear-capable B-52 bombers rotating through Tindal air base south of Darwin. In addition, US Virginia-class submarines docking at HMAS Stirling near Perth, could in the future be carrying nuclear weapons……………………….

, the nuclear arms control regime is breaking down.

The New Start treaty, a comprehensive arms control and transparency agreement limiting the US and Russia’s nuclear arsenals, expires in February and there is little prospect of it being renewed.

For Tilman Ruff, a founding member of ICAN whose Nobel Prize Albanese held at the 2018 conference, this only increases the need to sign the ban treaty.

“At a time of weakened international cooperation, it significantly increases the urgency of getting disarmament, preventing nuclear war,” he said.

“The treaty doesn’t prevent military collaboration with a nuclear-armed state. It only prevents collaboration on nuclear weapons.”

Albanese said signing the ban treaty was “Labor at our best”. As it turns out, we’ve seen Labor at its most pragmatic. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-03/labor-retreats-from-nuclear-weapons-ban-pledge-four-corners/105959312?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

November 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The SMR boom will soon go bust

by Ben Kritz, 3 Nov 25, https://www.msn.com/en-ph/technology/general/the-smr-boom-will-soon-go-bust/ar-AA1PJi1U

ONE sign that the excessively hyped concept of small modular reactors (SMRs) is now living on borrowed time is the lack of enthusiasm in the outlook from energy market analysts, whether they are individuals such as Leonard Hyman, William Tilles and Vaclav Smil, or big firms such as JP Morgan and Jones Lang LaSalle. None of them are optimistic that the sector will be productive before the middle of next decade, and the more critical ones are already predicting that it will never be, and that the “SMR bubble” will burst before the end of this one. My frequent readers will already know that I stand firmly with the latter view; basic market logic, in fact, makes any other view impossible.

In a recent commentary for Oil Price.com, one of the rather large number of online energy market news and analysis outlets, Hyman and Tilles predicted that the SMR bubble will burst in 2029. They based this on the reasonable observation that power supply forecasts are typically done on a three- to five-year timeframe. The fleet of SMRs that are currently expected to be in service between 2030 and 2035 simply will not be there, so energy planners will, at a minimum, omit them from the next planning window, and might decide to forget about them entirely. Deals will dry up, investors will dump their stocks or stop putting venture capital into SMR developers, and those developers will find themselves bankrupt.

That is an entirely plausible and perhaps even likely scenario, but the SMR bubble may burst much sooner than that, perhaps even as soon as next year, because of the existence of the other tech bubble, artificial intelligence, or AI, an acronym that in my mind sounds like “as if.” The topic of the AI bubble is an enormous can of worms, too complex to discuss right now, but the basic problem with it that is relevant to the SMR sector is that AI developers need a great deal of energy immediately. It has reached a point where AI-related data centers are described in terms of their energy requirements — in gigawatt increments — rather than their processing capacity. The availability of power determines whether or not a data center can be built; if the power is not already available, it must be within the relatively short time it will take to complete the data center’s construction.

Even if SMRs were readily available, their costs would discourage customers; AI developers are not too concerned with energy costs now, but they will be as their needs to start actually generating a profit become more acute. On a per-unit basis, SMRs are and are likely to always be more expensive than conventional, gigawatt-scale nuclear plants, and for that matter, most other power supply options. Hyman and Tilles estimate that on a per-unit cost basis (e.g., cost per megawatt-hour or gigawatt-hour), SMRs will be about 30 percent higher than the most efficient available gigawatt-scale large nuclear plants. Being smaller, SMRs would — hypothetically, as they do not actually exist yet — certainly cost less up front than large nuclear or conventionally fueled power plants, but their electricity would cost much more in the long run. That might not be an issue in some applications, but it certainly would if SMRs were intended to supply electricity to a national or regional grid.

Some analyses point out that some early adopters of SMRs, that is, customers who have put down money or otherwise promised to order one or more SMR units if and when they become available, may not be particularly price-sensitive; for example, military customers, governments taking responsibility for supplying electricity to remote areas, or some industrial customers. However, they would still be tripped up by the fragmented nature of the SMR sector, which was caused by the “tech bro” mindset of ignoring almost 70 years of experience in nuclear development and trying to reinvent the wheel.

JP Morgan’s 2025 energy report noted that there are only three SMRs in existence, with one additional one under construction; there is one in China, two in Russia, and the one not yet completed is in Argentina. All of them had construction timelines of three to four years, but took 12 years to complete; or in Argentina’s case, 12 years and counting. Argentina’s project has had cost overruns of 700 percent so far, while China and Russia’s projects were 300 percent and 400 percent over budget, respectively.

These are all essentially one-off, first-of-a-kind units, so some of these problems are to be expected, such as regulatory delays, design and manufacturing inefficiencies, and challenges from building supply chains from scratch. These problems would be resolved over time, except that there are literally hundreds of different SMR designs all competing for the same finite, niche-application market.

If the SMR developers listened to the engineers and policymakers who built up nuclear energy sectors that took advantage of economies of scale by standardizing a few designs and distributing the workload, they might get somewhere. That is not happening; potential customers, whether they have power cost concerns or not, are reluctant to jump in because it is not at all certain which SMRs will survive the competition. They might be willing to experiment to see if one design or another actually works — that is why the Chinese and Russian SMRs exist — but the fragmented SMR sector prevents them from trying more than one and making comparisons, at least not in a timely or financially rational manner.

I think the bubble begins to burst this coming year. The timeframe for construction to startup in most SMR pitches is four years. That’s entirely too optimistic, of course, but even if it is taken at face value, once we get a few months into 2026 without any tangible development happening, everyone will catch on that there won’t be any SMRs by 2030, and interest will turn elsewhere. It already is, among the data center sector, as was explained above.

November 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Who is paying for Britain’s nuclear revival?

Ultimately, the UK taxpayer is paying for both power stations……………..If Sizewell’s total costs rise above around £47 billion, private investors are not obliged to inject additional equity, leaving the taxpayer exposed to cost overruns.

15th October 2025 by Sol Woodroffe, https://www.if.org.uk/2025/10/15/who-is-paying-for-britains-nuclear-revival/

In this article, IF volunteer Sol Woodroffe, considers the intergenerational fairness of the government’s financing models for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C.

Building a nuclear power station: an intergenerational decision

Building a nuclear reactor is very expensive. In fact, the financing costs are the most expensive part. According to the World Nuclear Association, capital costs for new nuclear power stations account for at least 60% of their Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE). The LCOE is the total cost to build and operate a power plant over its lifetime divided by the total electricity output dispatched from the plant over that period. This means that when we talk about the price of nuclear, we are really talking about the price of borrowing to cover the upfront costs.

Specifically, when determining whether a government should invest in nuclear power, the cost depends on how much the government values cheap electricity for future generations. The decision to build a nuclear power station is a truly intergenerational one. This graph from the World Nuclear Association highlights how different discount rates affect the value for money of nuclear energy compared with other energy sources:

This shows that the relative capital intensity of building a nuclear power station means that the more we discount future generations, the less worth it nuclear energy seems from today’s standpoint.

The discount rate the government chooses to use on public infrastructure projects is, to some extent, determined by interest rates. But it is also an ethical choice about how much the government cares about future generations. The lower the value placed on future generations, the higher the discount rate used, and so the more expensive nuclear energy seems.

On the face of it, the UK government’s decision to build two enormous nuclear reactors should be a source of optimism for young people.  Nuclear energy is one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy. In many parts of the world, it is also one of the cheapest. Decarbonisation, energy security and industrial strategy are all part of the motivation for building these reactors. Many of the UK’s current reactors were built in the 70s and 80s and will retire by the early 2030s.  Without new capacity, the UK will lose a major source of low carbon power. Arguably, it’s a sign of the UK government daring to invest for future generations. And yet, a closer look at the financing of the two reactors tells a different story…

What are Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C

Hinkley Point C is the first new UK nuclear station in a generation. It uses the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) design and, when complete, will be one of the largest nuclear power stations in Europe. According to EDF Energy, each of its two reactors will produce enough electricity to supply roughly 7% of the UK’s electricity demand. Construction was authorised by Theresa May’s government in September 2016. The original target was to have it running by 2025, but EDF now forecasts first power no earlier than 2029–2031.

Sizewell C is a close imitation of Hinkley planned for the Suffolk coast. The UK government approved the development in July 2022 and committed public equity financing in November 2022. Because the Hinkley supply chain and licensing work already existed, ministers argued that a second EPR project would reduce design and regulatory costs. Sizewell C will have enough capacity to power around six million homes when operating.

What went wrong and why?

Both projects are running well behind their initial projected timelines, and both have run worryingly over budget. These two things are interrelated. Long construction periods push up financing costs. Again, the cost of finance here is all-important. Over a long construction period, during which there are no revenue streams from the project, the interest on funds borrowed can compound into very significant amounts (World Nuclear Association, 2023).

HPC’s original cost estimate was about £18 billion but now is projected to a whopping £31–£35 billion. Moreover, our research on the “nuclear premium” estimated the additional cost of power from Hinkley Point C for its 35-year initial contract period, compared to onshore wind and solar power, would be £31.2 billion and £39.9 billion respectively.  Sizewell C’s projected cost has ballooned from an initial estimate of around £20 billion to £38 billion (in 2025 pricing), nearly doubling the original figure.

The cause of these cost overruns is clear. EDF has complained that the UK lacks the building infrastructure and productive capacity for such a massive project. This kind of capacity is built up over time and requires beginning with smaller projects and then gradually scaling up. To some extent, the government has acknowledged this mistake and so began to invest in the small modular reactor programme in the UK, but from the perspective of the taxpayer, it all seems too little too late.

Who is paying for these power station?

Ultimately, the UK taxpayer is paying for both power stations. But from an intergenerational fairness perspective, the key questions are which taxpayers and when. The government has an option to borrow and shield the current taxpaying generation from footing the bill, but rising UK borrowing costs and increasingly jittery bond markets mean this would come at a serious cost.

Hinkley Point: paid for by Gen Z and Gen Alpha

The financing model for each power station is very different. For Hinkley point, the government has agreed on a Contract for Difference. This means that private companies must cover the upfront costs, with the knowledge that they receive a guaranteed price for their energy when the costs are finished.

EDF, the French national energy company, and CGN, the Chinese national energy company, shouldered much of the initial capital cost. In return, the government guarantees a price of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 £) for 35 years of output.

There were serious advantages to this model from a public financing perspective. The main advantage was that the investors took on the construction-cost risk: the UK taxpayer has arguably not been punished because Hinkley Point’s financial costs have so enormously overrun.

Nonetheless, this model ultimately kicks the financial burden down the road. Ultimately, today’s Gen-Z and Gen Alpha will be made to pay for this deal.

This is because the guaranteed price will likely be a rip-off. The average price of energy today in terms of 2012 pounds is £50–55/MWh. The falling price of clean energy alternatives means that we should expect the real price of energy to fall over the next few decades. Therefore, it seems highly likely that the fixed price will be a seriously uncompetitive rate for future UK consumers.

Sizewell C: a fairer distribution of costs

The financing of Sizewell distributes the financing costs more fairly between generations. To pay for the reactor, the government switched to a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model. This means that consumers begin contributing to the project’s financing through small charges on their energy bills while the plant is still under construction, rather than waiting until it generates electricity. The model provides investors with a regulated return during construction, reducing their exposure to financing risk.

The RAB model allows investors to share construction and operational risks with consumers, which in theory lowers the cost of capital. Since capital costs make up the majority of nuclear project expenses, this could make Sizewell C substantially cheaper overall, if delivered as planned.

The key drawback is that taxpayers and consumers shoulder significant risk. If total costs rise above around £47 billion, private investors are not obliged to inject additional equity, leaving the taxpayer exposed to cost overruns.

From an intergenerational fairness perspective, the financing model is somewhat fairer as it smooths the cost of construction between generations. Nonetheless, the future taxpayers are the ones most exposed to the risk of cost overruns.

The cost of decommissioning

Historically, the cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations has been gravely underestimated in the UK. Decommissioning costs will be faced by generations well into the future, and so whether the state considers them massively depends on the chosen discount rate. Ultimately, the more the government values future consumers, the more seriously they must take these massive costs.

Sizewell and Hinkley both have operating lives of 60 years. However, with Sizewell, future taxpayers are exposed to the risk of ballooning decommissioning costs, whereas with Hinkley the operator must fully cover these costs.

Think of the children 

When these large public infrastructure projects are discussed, the focus is often on whether government has negotiated value for money for UK taxpayers. But if the government wants to claim nuclear is a forward-looking investment, it must prove future generations won’t be the ones footing the bill.

November 3, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

 Nuclear news – not from the military-industrial-political-media complex

Some bits of good news –      Israel-Palestine: the bereaved parents bringing hope to a divided land.    The Country Making Orphanages Obsolete. 

Quarter Century of Collecting Seeds From Around the World Safeguards Them From ExtinctionTOP STORIES

. Trump Is Moving Relentlessly Toward Illegal War in Venezuela. 
It’s Not a Ballroom- It’s a Bunker. 
Trump Is Very Confused About Nuclear Weapons.
What Ends the SMR Bubble? 

The Next Nuclear Renaissance? 
New Radiation Protection Standards in 2026? 
Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry.
Israel and US Scorn ICJ Ruling Against Starving Civilians as Method of Warfare.

Climate. ‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head

Noel’s notes. Right wing- Left wing – on the nuclear issue it doesn’t matter

AUSTRALIA. 

• We should never have agreed to AUKUS. “Mr President, take our critical minerals“: Albanese in the White House. Has Trump set Australia up for a rare earths price war with China? 
• Are Our Priorities Wrong? Defence Spending vs Real Needs. 
• Australia fiddles with fossil gas while the country swelters in record heat. It doesn’t make sense. 
• Australian Conservation Foundation responds to Labor’s Environment Protection Agency announcement.

NUCLEAR ITEMS

October 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

US President Donald Trump says South Korea has approval to build nuclear-powered submarine

30 Oct 25, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-30/south-korea-permission-to-build-nuclear-submarines/105951210

In short: 

Korea has been given permission by Donald Trump to build a nuclear powered submarine. 

The permission is a dramatic move that would admit South Korea to a small group of nations that possess this type of vessel. 

The US president met with leader on his ongoing tour of Asia. 

US President Donald Trump says he has given South Korea approval to build a nuclear-powered submarine, a dramatic move that would admit Seoul to a small club of nations possessing such vessels.

Mr Trump, who has been meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and other regional leaders during his visit, also said Seoul had agreed to buy vast quantities of US oil and gas.

The submarine will be built in a Philadelphia shipyard, where South Korean firms have increased investment, Mr Trump wrote on social media. 

Mr Trump and Mr Lee finalised details of a fraught trade deal at a summit in South Korea on Wednesday.

Mr Lee had also been seeking US permission for South Korea to reprocess nuclear fuel. 

Nuclear restrictions easing?

Seoul is barred from reprocessing without US consent, under a pact between the countries.

“I have given them approval to build a nuclear-powered submarine, rather than the old-fashioned and far less nimble, diesel-powered submarines that they have now,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. 

South Korea’s Industry Ministry said its officials had not been involved in any detailed discussions about building the submarines in Philadelphia.

While South Korea has a sophisticated shipbuilding industry, Mr Trump did not spell out where the propulsion technology would come from for a nuclear-powered submarine, which only a handful of countries possess.

The US has been working with Australia and Britain on a project for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, involving technology transfers from the United States. 

The US has so far only shared that technology with Britain, back in the 1950s.

Mr Lee said when he met Mr Trump on Wednesday that allowing South Korea to build several nuclear-powered submarines equipped with conventional weapons would significantly reduce the burden on the US military.

He also asked for Mr Trump’s support to make substantial progress on South Korea being allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, or on uranium enrichment.

This is not allowed under the nuclear agreement between the two countries, even though South Korea possesses nuclear reactors to generate power.

Approval raises questions

Mr Lee’s predecessors had wanted to build nuclear-powered submarines, but the US had opposed this idea for decades.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the issue of South Korea acquiring such submarines “raises all sorts of questions.”

“As with the AUKUS deal, (South Korea) is probably looking for nuclear propulsion services suitable for subs, including the fuel, from the US,” he said.

Mr Kimball said such submarines usually involved the use of highly-enriched uranium and would “require a very complex new regime of safeguards” by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has a key role in implementing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

“It remains technically and militarily unnecessary for South Korea to acquire the technology to extract weapons-usable plutonium from spent fuel or to acquire uranium enrichment capabilities, which can also be used to produce nuclear weapons,” he said.

“If the United States seeks to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide, the Trump administration should resist such overtures from allies as strongly as it works to deny adversary access to these dual-use technologies.”

Jenny Town, who heads 38 North, a Korea-focused research group in Washington, said it was inevitable that South Korean demands for US cooperation on nuclear issues would grow, given recent allegations about Russian technical cooperation to help nuclear-armed North Korea make progress towards acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

Kim Dong-yup, a North Korea studies professor at Kyungnam University, said the Lee-Trump summit had formalised a “transaction scheme of security guarantees and economic contributions” for maintaining the extended deterrence and alliance in exchange for South Korea’s increased defence spending and nuclear-powered subs and US investments. 

“In the end, this South Korea-US summit can be summarised in one word: the commercialisation of the alliance and the commodification of peace,” he said. 

“The problem is that the balance of that deal was to maximise American interests rather than the autonomy of the Korean Peninsula.”

October 31, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

New Radiation Protection Standards in 2026?

Tony Webb – November 2025.

In May 2025 US President Donald Trump ordered the US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) to review US radiation protection standards for workers and the public. The order claims that these and other NRC regulatory processes hinder development of US nuclear power generation and need to be revised – in line with another set of his ‘alternative facts’ that overturn almost all the established principles that provide the basis of national and international protection standards.

This latest diktat will result in a significant weakening of current protection at a time when we have mounting scientific evidence that the existing standards need to be significantly improved/tightened. Permissible radiation exposures to workers will likely increase five-fold. Exposures to the public could be 100 times greater than currently permitted. Changes in the USA will lead to pressure for similar changes to standards in other countries, including Australia. Whether we end up with better or worse protection will require a sustained awareness and advocacy campaign. This will need to involve exposed workers, trade unions, environment and public health
interests arguing: first that our government and radiation protection agencies should reject the US approach, and second that new and improved national standards in line with the latest evidence should be adopted.

Health effects of radiation exposure

It has long been recognised that all radiation exposures present a risk to human health. Put simply there is no safe level of radiation – whether naturally occurring or artificially generated. Some we cannot avoid. Some like diagnostic medical x-rays we accept as having other countervailing benefits. High doses, like those received
by Japanese residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from nuclear bombs in 1945, or some of the first responders to the Ukrainian Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986, cause ‘radiation sickness’ where whole organs are damaged often with fatal
effects.

The results from high-dose exposures are what are known as ‘determinate’ effects.
Above a threshold dose these effects occur with severity determined by the dose. Radiation standards are set to keep exposures below the threshold, so these do not occur.

Lower doses cause a different kind of damage. Particularly concerning are increased rates of a wide range of cancers and genetic damage being passed on to future generations. These are referred to as ‘stochastic’ effects. The damage is not ‘determinate’ with a threshold below which they do not occur. Stochastic damage is a ‘hit and miss’ affair. You either get this type of health damage or you don’t. And if you do the scale of the damage isn’t related to the radiation dose you received.

The initial damage occurs at the cellular level where a radiation strike can have one of three outcomes. (i) It may simply pass through causing no damage. Alternatively, (ii) the radiation may kill the cell which isn’t a problem, unless too many cells are killed at once affecting functioning of whole organs. Our bodies are eliminating and replacing dead and dying cells all the time. Problems arise however when (iii) the cell is merely damaged and goes on to replicate in this damaged form.

Our bodies do have well developed repair mechanisms that often result in adequate repair of the damage. There is even some evidence suggesting that some such radiation damage and repair may assist the body’s capacity for repair in the future.
But where radiation leaves the damaged cell to survive and replicate uncontrollably in this damaged form the result is what we call a cancer – sometimes detectable only decades after the initial radiation damage. The process can be complicated further as growth of some cancers involves a two-stage process – initiation, where damage (from radiation or other environmental pollutants) leaves the cell susceptible,
followed by promotion (again from radiation or other sources) which drives the cell-cancer process forward.

Stochastic radiation damage is real. it doesn’t involve a threshold dose. Any exposure can be the one that causes the initial and/or subsequent damage leading to the health effects. We are in the world of ‘probability’ – far from certainty at the individual level but with fairly predictable outcomes at the population level which allow us to assess the risk (i.e., probability of an adverse outcome) individuals face from receiving small, sometimes repeated, doses of radiation.

Radiation protection principles.
In light of these established mechanisms for harm from radiation, standard setting bodies have long adopted three principles – that any exposure needs to be: (i) justified as necessary against some social benefits; (ii) kept as low as reasonably achievable (the ALARA principle); and (iii) kept below specified limits set in regulations.

The last of these has been the subject of much controversy over the years.
Standards have been set for workers’ occupational exposures and for public exposures. These, first, ensure exposures are below the threshold levels where deterministic effects might occur. Below these high levels, they have been set such that the risk of stochastic effects – particularly cancers and genetic damage are at levels deemed ‘acceptable’. There have been arguments over both what is ‘acceptable’ and how the probable level of risk from any given low dose is estimated.

Estimates of risk
A number of early studies of patients exposed as part of medical procedures indicated a problem with radiation exposure and some early estimates of the stochastic risk. Since then, the bulk of the data for the estimates of risk has come from studies of survivors of the Japanese nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These Life Span Studies (LSS) have consistently shown
increases in cancer rates among survivors higher than those in the non-exposed population. There are a number of problems with this data – not least that survivors were not wearing film badges when the bombs went off, so all doses have had to be estimated later. They were also the ‘hardy’ survivors of wide-ranging traumatic
events, perhaps less vulnerable to damage from radiation Most of these survivors received relatively high doses as a single exposure or within a relatively short time period. More accurate measures of small exposures repeated over longer time periods to a general population, might be expected to yield different results.

However, these were the best data to be had. The risks at lower doses are estimated using the assumption that, if there is no safe level of exposure, no threshold below which stochastic effects do not occur, we can estimate lower dose risks on a straight line from these higher LSS doses. This Linear No Threshold (LNT) assumption, though adopted by all stands setting bodies, has at times been contested. Some have suggested a sub-linear relationship with a threshold for any effects. Others have made the case for a super-linear or marginally higher effect at lower doses where these are spread over longer time periods or result from radiative material that gets inside the body.

For now all the significant agencies agree that radiation protection for workers and the public should be based on LNT and the three radiation protection principles: justification, ALARA, and Specific Exposure Limits. These agencies include: the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) the United Nations
Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (known as the BEIR Committee) and national agencies like the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA). The cancer risk from low
dose radiation is estimated to be in the range of 4-6% per Sievert (1000 mSv) of exposure. The risk of genetic damage (first two generations only) is estimated to be around 1.5% per Sievert.

These estimates have resulted in national protection bodies setting standards that limit annual exposures. For workers the annual limit is 20 mSv as a target – but with 50 mSv allowed in any year provided the average over five years does not exceed 20 mSv. The annual limit for public exposures is 1 mSv. All of these are for
exposures in addition to what might be received from natural background radiation or exposures due to medical procedures such as diagnostic x-rays and nuclear medicine.

Change is coming – one way or another.
It is these protection principles and the exposure standards for workers and the public that the Presidential directive to the US NRC seeks to overturn. It calls on the NRC to reconsider reliance on LNT (and ALARA) as the basis for standard setting at low doses, where there is a need to protect against probable stochastic effects and
directs that instead the NRC set standards based on deterministic effects.

This will likely result in a significant weakening of the current standards at a time when the evidence strongly suggests that they are in need of further tightening. The current standards have been in place since 1991. Revisions at that time were the result of a sustained campaign throughout the 1980s led by trade unions in the UK, Europe, USA and Canada for reduction of the then 50 mSv occupational and 5 mSv public limits -justified in large part by emerging evidence from the Japanese lifespan studies. As previously noted, estimates of risk from these was based on one-off
short-term exposure to relatively high doses (at and above 100 mSv). Since then, studies in Europe and North America of workers exposed over years of work in nuclear industries to doses below the current occupational limits, indicate the risks are around 2 to 3 times greater than those used for setting the current standards.
They also show a doubling of expected rates of cardio-vascular diseases: strokes, arthro-sclerosis, and heart damage. In addition, studies of populations living close to nuclear facilities in Europe and the USA show childhood cancer rates significantly higher than expected. This evidence is cause for concern, suggesting that the
current standards provide inadequate protection and need to be tightened.

A new campaign for improved protection?
Past experience suggests that persuading national and international bodies to improve radiation protection standards is far from easy but not impossible. In the short term, a campaign would be seeking clear and unequivocal statements from national protection agencies that reject the US president’s directive that the NRC abandon the fundamental principles which have formed the basis for regulating worker and public exposures. If implemented Trump’s proposals would likely result in occupational exposure limits five times higher than presently allowed, and public exposure limits could be 100 times greater.

The campaign should seek assurances that there will be no change to the established principles underpinning radiation protection: that there is no safe level of radiation, that all exposures should be kept as low as can be reasonably achievable; and that occupational and public limits need to be based on the best scientific evidence of risk to human populations.

Raising the concern about, and seeking rejection of, the likely US NRC changes will require building an informed coalition of trade union, environment and public health interests. Occupational and public radiation exposures are more widespread that commonly appreciated. Workers are routinely exposed in mining, industry and medicine as well as those associated with the nuclear power industry. The. campaign could involve local initiatives that focus concerns of workers in , and people living close to sites of: proposed nuclear power plants; existing uranium, mineral sands, and hard rock mines; proposed ‘rare earth’ mines; medical and other
radioactive waste storage sites; and other activities that routinely release radiative materials.

Opposing Trump’s latest proposals to weaken standards is fairly straightforward. If implemented by the NRC they would dismantle the whole edifice on which radiation protection has been built over the past 80 years – a framework that many concerned about radiation protection within the affected industries have invested time and energy to establish and maintain.

Pressing the claim for improvements is harder but not impossible given the evidence for greater harm that is emerging. The case can already be made for at least halving the permissible occupational and public exposure limits. If we are successful in pressing for improved protection standards, the nuclear industry is unlikely to thank President Trump for opening this can of worms with his NRC directive. Once opened it will be hard to close without increasing worker and public awareness of how any, and all radiation exposures increase health risks to workers the public and to future generations.

Tony Webb has worked as a researcher, consultant and advisor on radiation and health issues to politicians, trade unions, environment and public health groups in the UK, Europe, USA , Canada and Australasia since the late1970s. He can be contacted for information on how to assist the latest evolving international  campaign via  tonyrwebb@gmail.com. 

October 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized | Leave a comment