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.
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2026
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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've only learned (so no first hand experience) about radiation exposure limits and such around power plants in college, plus I agree with the sentiments you mentioned, but isn't it common that being inside a powerplant has less radiation than being in a standard home? The amount of water, shielding, concrete, etc around a powerplant results in less radiation than being near your TV, microwave, any number of foods like bananas, or getting an X-ray once in a blue moon or something like that
Or I'm misremembering my professor and talking out of my ass but I'm more than happy to learn one way or another
I mean, that's technically true, but doesn't really mean much since you're not accounting for what kind of radiation. An alpha particle, a gamma ray, and a radio wave are all radiation. One of those can kill you, one of those is harmless by itself, but dangerous in the wrong conditions, and one of those might make your hand warm if you had an unfathomably intense blast of it. Not all radiation is created equal. Unfortunately most people will never get past "radiation = bad"
Adding context: Alpha particles can kill you, and are actually more lethal than gamma because alpha has so much more mass than gamma.
Because of its size though, an alpha particule cannot penetrate your skin. However alpha is incredibly dangerous if you ingest it, giving it direct access to your soft internal organ tissue. When working jobs that had a risk of alpha contamination, we had to run constant air samples and take extra precautions to protect eyes/nose/mouth from an accidental "uptake."
The good news is that alpha is only present really when you're working on the core, or primary loop. This rarely happens outside of refueling outages. Gamma will be the concern the rest of the time.
Beta matters too, but as one might expect, beta is a little beta bitch.
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
https://youtu.be/KT5hYHdelmg?is=fwAv1ncCKuL8UtTm
Kyle Hill has a few videos about this topic and has been advocating for this change for a while.
US speed running USSR