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Radiation harms. There is no safe level of exposure—and now the federal government is moving to weaken the standards meant to protect us.

President Trump’s Executive Orders are pushing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to weaken radiation protections as part of an effort to accelerate the construction of more nuclear reactors, nuclear-powered data centers, and the expansion of the nuclear weapons complex. These changes could expose people and communities to dramatically more radiation while disregarding decades of evidence about the health risks of even low-dose exposure. 

· No exemptions for radiation exposure. Nuclear licensees must be required to track and count all radiation doses and radioactive emissions, with no minimum threshold. Any proposal allowing 25 millirem per year—or any millirem or microrem level—before exposures begin to “count” would effectively permit additional radiation exposure to go untracked. That could mean higher worker doses and increased radioactive releases into our air, water, and sewage, while making it harder to understand the true health impacts of cumulative, low-dose radiation exposure. If radiation is released and people are exposed, it should be tracked and reported and kept to a minimum.  

· If new nuclear reactors are as safe and clean as the industry claims, why do our existing health and safety protections need to be weakened to build them? The rush to expand nuclear power should not come at the expense of safeguards designed to protect workers, communities, and the public. If nuclear expansion requires weaker radiation standards to move forward, that should raise serious questions—not justify lowering the bar. Don’t weaken the regulations. 

· We MUST retain the goal of keeping exposures to radiation As Low As Reasonably Achievable.

This is not an abstract regulatory debate. It is about how much radiation the government considers acceptable for you, your family, and your community to be exposed to.

Weakening already inadequate radiation standards could  double or more allowable exposure—and the resulting cancer risk— And that risk is not distributed equally. Women, children, older adults, workers, and communities living near nuclear facilities face greater risks.

The science is clear that radiation’s harms extend far beyond cancer. Radiation causes  immune dysfunction and heart and cardiovascular disease. It could cause infertility, and disruption of pregnancy. In 2021, after a six-year review, the NRC itself rejected the industry proposal to do away with the Linear NoThreshold model.  NRC should rely on that decision, not weaken it. 

Yet instead of strengthening protections, the federal government is trying to move in the opposite direction.

We know what happens when regulators underestimate radiation risk. Billions of dollars in government compensation have already been paid to people harmed by radiation exposure—including people whose exposures occurred below legal levels  at the time. We  must not repeat those mistakes  to make nuclear expansion dirtier and cheaper.

If radiation standards are weakened while nuclear facilities proliferate, more radioactive materials will be produced, transported, processed, stored, and released into our environment. Once radioactive contamination is released, we cannot simply take it back.

This is a moment when we have to act. Regulators and lawmakers need to hear that public health protections are not an inconvenience to be eliminated in the rush to build more nuclear facilities.