DOGE goes nuclear: How trump invited silicon valley into America’s nuclear power regulator

Summary

The DOE spokesperson said its radiation standards “are aligned with Gold Standard Science… with a focus on protecting people and the environment while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.” The department has already decided to abandon the long-standing radiation protection principle known as “ALARA”—the “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” standard—which directs anyone dealing with radioactive materials to minimize exposure. It often pushes exposure well below legal thresholds. Many experts agreed that the ALARA principle was sometimes applied too strictly, but the move to entirely throw it out was opposed by many prominent radiation health experts. Whether the agencies will actually change the legal thresholds for radiation exposure is an open question, said sources familiar with the deliberations. Internal DOE documents arguing for changing dose rules cite a report produced at the Idaho National Laboratory, which was compiled with the help of the AI assistant Claude. “It’s really strange,” said Kathryn Higley, president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, a congressionally chartered group studying radiation safety. “They fundamentally mistake the science.” John Wagner, the head of the Idaho National Laboratory and the report’s lead author, acknowledged to ProPublica that the science over changing radiation exposure rules is hotly contested. “We recognize that respected experts interpret aspects of this literature differently,” he wrote. His analysis was not meant to be the final word, he said, but was “intended to inform debate.” The impact of radiation levels at very low doses is hard to measure, so the US has historically struck a cautious note. Raising dose limits could put the US out of step with international standards. For his part, Cohen has told the nuclear industry that he sees his job as making sure the government “is no longer a barrier” to them. In June, he shot down the notion of companies putting money into a fund for workplac...