Opponents of nuclear power criticized the new rules. The changes “would allow nuclear facility workers and the general public to be exposed to higher levels of cancer-causing radiation just to save the nuclear industry money,” said Edwin Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a frequent critic of the industry.
So, I’m actually a big proponent of nuclear power… But why would we not want to keep detectable radiation levels outside the reactor, as low as possible.
So I used to be a radiation health physics technician in a commercial nuclear plant.
Most field instruments bottom out at 0.2 milliRem/hour. Whenever possible, we wanted areas to be <0.2. if an area was 0.3 or 0.5, we didn’t have to take any additional precautions being there because it’s still incredibly low. That being said, a lot of man hours and materials are used to turn 0.3-0.9 zones into <0.2 zones.
I don’t have the energy to look into these proposed changes, and I doubt they are good purely because of the current administration, but I could see scenarios where not needing to be ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) would save a lot of time and money without meaningfully endangering anyone.
I don’t think letting go of ALARA is the way. But definitely the R part of ALARA should get more priority. What you describe seems a bit unreasonable indeed, and more ALAA than ALARA.
Agreed