Last fall, Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the audience at Senator John Curtis’ conservative climate summit that “nuclear is going to become sexy again.” For policy wonks and proponents of modernizing outdated nuclear regulation, there may be nothing sexier than reforming ALARA. 

The Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model and the ALARA principle (As Low As Reasonably Achievable are two elements that have guided U.S. radiation standards for decades. While well-intentioned, outdated radiation standards have imposed unnecessary costs, slowed innovation, and reinforced public fear for years, while providing little to no benefit to the environment or public health. Reform is not merely desirable; it is a strategic necessity and essential for improving the economic outlook for nuclear power.

This week, E&E News reported that the Department of Energy will end the use of the ALARA principle. The timing is critical because the United States is striving to meet growing energy needs, accelerate the deployment of advanced reactors, and maintain global leadership in energy innovation. A welcome next step would be for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to follow DOE’s lead. 

Background 

The LNT hypothesis emerged from Hermann Muller’s 1927 experiments on fruit flies, which showed that radiation can induce heritable mutations. Interpreted amid Cold War fears of fallout and atomic weapons, this research shaped the belief that any dose of ionizing radiation increases cancer risk in a linear fashion. In 1956, the National Academy of Sciences’ BEAR report institutionalized LNT as the foundation for radiation protection. 

The ALARA principle, introduced by the NRC in 1975, was initially meant to apply LNT pragmatically by requiring exposures to be kept “as low as reasonably achievable” while factoring in cost and feasibility. 

Over time, however, ALARA lost its balancing intent. Regulatory enforcement increasingly pushed operators to minimize exposures well below natural background radiation levels, regardless of the benefits. For example, multi-million-dollar plant modifications have been mandated to achieve dose reductions lower than those from a cross-country flight or from consuming a banana. These reductions became mandatory for licensing and compliance, fueling a culture of regulatory absolutism.

Trusting the Science 

The LNT model is deeply flawed and rife with scandal and deception. Importantly, modern research fundamentally challenges the assumption that risk increases linearly at low doses. Radiobiology shows that cells are not passive victims of radiation damage; they possess complex repair systems and adaptive responses that mitigate low-dose effects. 

Epidemiological evidence supports this shift. Populations in Kerala, India, exposed to natural radiation levels up to 80 times higher than average, show no increased cancer rates. Studies of nuclear shipyard workers also reveal no significant increase in risk at low exposures. UNSCEAR and OECD reports conclude that applying linear risk models at these doses is scientifically unjustified and may significantly overestimate risk. 

As Emily Caffey, a radiation health physicist and assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told E&ENews, “ALARA has been misapplied across the board in a lot of different areas, and it has cost taxpayers a lot of money, and it has caused a lot of unnecessary fear in the public by saying, ‘Well, any little bit of radiation dose is going to give you a cancer,’ which is just fundamentally not true.”

>>>READ: Reforming Radiation Standards to Unlock Nuclear Energy’s Full Potential

ALARA Makes Nuclear Unnecessarily More Expensive  

Maintaining ultra-conservative standards is enormously costly. ALARA compliance inflates the construction and operating budgets of nuclear plants. Decommissioning and waste management projects are similarly burdened, with expenditures driven by thresholds disconnected from actual health risk. 

The Department of Energy has repeatedly faced cost escalations in cleanup projects, where marginal dose reductions came at disproportionate expense. More efficient processes and rightsized regulations could save nuclear plant operators billions of dollars, making them more competitive with other forms of energy generation. 

Critically, ALARA increases costs and could stunt the deployment of innovative small modular reactors, delaying or prohibiting the use of emissions-free, affordable power. By erecting a costly barrier to entry, new reactor companies must spend more precious capital on regulatory compliance for no meaningful health benefit.  

For example, Jack Devanney, the founder of advanced nuclear company ThorCon, points out that ALARA standards for tritium—an isotope that emits low levels of radioactivity and would have to be ingested at a high rate to pose a health hazard—raise operational costs for molten salt reactors (MSRs). While these reactors can be designed more efficiently than pressurized water reactors (PWRs), MSRs emit 60 times more tritium than PWRs. This forces MSR designers to “employ an expensive extra loop, cutting their economic advantage over the PWR and creating another set of fault points.”

Sayonara, ALARA 

By moving from outdated fear-based models to proportionate, risk-informed regulation, the U.S. can lead the next era of safe, reliable, clean, and globally competitive nuclear energy. DOE’s removal of ALARA is a welcome first step, but the NRC and Congress must follow suit to align radiation regulation with prevailing science. Doing so will protect public health without imposing undue economic burdens on nuclear energy, ratepayers, and taxpayers. 

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.