This recent opinion piece states that existing US radiation exposure limits are too strict and that this has led to excessive fear of radiation and a lack of investment in US nuclear power (https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2024/10/14/radiation_time_forgotten_1065066.html).
The article does correctly point out that many of our modern exposure standards are set based on what we learned from the single one-time dose Japanese residents received during the atomic bomb explosions at the end of World War II. Environmental health experts have struggled since then to make sense of that event and its health effects with regard to more mundane chronic exposures like radon, x-rays, and work-related exposures. More modern research can only find the level of exposure below which we lose the potential effect of radiation in the noise of other exposures, not really identify a safe threshold.
If it is true that there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure, or that the safe threshold is somewhat at or around average modern exposures, we may never be able to know or prove that to be true as it would require tracking lifetime exposures and health for tens or hundreds of millions of people, a significant practical challenge.
Bottom line: modern nuclear power is safe and reliable, and there is an ample safety factor built into current exposure limits, but the exposure limits are not the reason the public is wary of nuclear energy. We can do a better job of putting risks of other energy sources in context and hold on to nuclear power’s admirable safety record in the US.
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