RADIATION PROTECTION STANDARDS

For most of the past century, national and international standards agencies have regulated radiation protection based on three fundamental principles:

A ‘Linear No Threshold’ (LNT) model, based on scientific evidence that indicates there is no safe level of exposure. Any dose, however small, can be the one causing cancer sometimes taking years to develop or genetic damage affecting future generations.
Therefore, all exposures should be kept ‘As Low As Reasonably Achievable’ (ALARA).
Exposures to workers and the public should be kept below specified annual limits.

The science behind this protection regime is based on the capacity of ionising radiation to cause damage at the cellular level in the human body. Radiation striking a cell can either cause no damage or may kill the cell outright in which case, unless too many cells are killed at once, the body will eliminate the dead cells and function healthily.

The problem arises when a cell is merely damaged, and the natural process of repair is imperfect. This leaves the cell to replicate in its damaged form, which may in some cases lead to cancer or other long-term health or genetic damage. The level of such damage (known as stochastic) is a hit-and-miss affair: a low level of radiation exposure doesn’t guarantee a health effect, but as the level of exposure increases, the probability of damage increases.

CURRENT STANDARDS NEED TIGHTENING

The limits on exposure have been progressively tightened over the years as estimates of the cancer risks—mainly drawn from the Life-Span Studies (LSS) of Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb blasts in 1945—showed progressively higher rates of this stochastic health damage.

Recent evidence from studies of workers in the nuclear industries in France, the UK, and the USA (the INWORKS studies) suggests that worker-exposure limits need to be revised again—and significantly tightened. In addition, studies on the health of populations living close to nuclear power plants in Europe and the USA show significantly elevated rates of cancer in both children and the elderly, directly related to living distance from these facilities.

UNITED STATES PROPOSALS WOULD WEAKEN CURRENT STANDARDS

Unfortunately, it appears that the USA is headed in the opposite direction and, given the recent behavior of the current President, may soon pressure other countries to follow suit. In May 2025, President Donald Trump issued a Directive (EO 14300) instructing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to revise all its regulations – in particular, those relating to radiation health and safety. He instructed the NRC to abandon the LNT and ALARA principles and re-set limits on worker and public exposures based on ‘deterministic’ rather than ‘probabilistic’/’stochastic’ health outcomes, potentially allowing much higher levels of exposure. Exactly how the NRC will respond to these directives is unclear.

To comply with the president’s orders would put the USA in conflict with national and international agencies such as the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), the United Nations Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), the US National Academy of Science’s Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (the BEIR committee), and other countries’ national agencies, including the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Standards Agency (ARPANSA), all of which have recently reaffirmed commitment to the LNT and ALARA principles and the current annual limits on worker and public exposure.

The draft of the revised NRC regulations on radiation protection is expected on 30 April 2026, with a 30-day period for comments before the final comprehensive revision of all NRC regulations is published in November 2026. In the meantime, a report to the US Department of Energy appears to fully endorse the Trump proposals and recommends a revised annual occupational exposure limit of 100 mSv – double the current US limit and five times the 20 mSv standard in most other countries. It also recommends raising the limit on public exposures from 1 mSv to 5 mSv.

AN INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN

These US proposals have stimulated the beginnings of an international campaign bringing together trade unions, environmental and public health groups, and communities concerned about current and future exposures from mining, industrial, medical, and nuclear radiation sources. The objectives of this campaign are two-fold:

• To pressure national and international agencies with responsibility for radiation protection to publicly repudiate any US regulations that align with the Trump Directive and resist any pressures from the US to similarly weaken existing national standards;
• To build pressure on these national and international agencies to revise and tighten the standards in line with the best available scientific evidence that the health risks are greater than those used to set current standards.

THE MILITARY CONNECTION

For Australian workers and the public, the situation is complicated by and made more urgent as a result of the Australia, UK, USA (AUKUS) agreement regarding the building and stationing of nuclear-powered submarines in Australia. We have already seen the creation of a separate Australian Naval Nuclear Power Standards Regulator (ANNPSR) that will be responsible for all standards in the construction, operation, maintenance, decommissioning, and radioactive waste management from the submarines built or stationed here. We can expect pressure from the USA to have these standards align with those in the USA. As such, the ANNPSR could become a back door for pressuring the current standards agency ARPANSA to revise and weaken rather than tighten protection standards across the full range of other occupational and public radiation health risks. Similar pressures can be expected in other countries with close military connections to the US.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

For more information and to be kept informed of developments as this campaign evolves, contact Dr. Tony Webb, E-mail: webbt45@icloud.com
, Phone: Australia – 0418 212 632 / International +61 418 212 632.

Perhaps the most comprehensive, up-to-date summary of the evidence on risks from radiation can be found in Fairlie, I. 2026. The Dangers of Ionising Radiation: A Scientific Guide to Radiation Risks for Government Agencies, Legal Professionals and Medical Clinicians. Ethics International Press. https://ethicspress.com/products/the-dangers-of-ionising-radiation