The DOE spokesperson said its radiation guidelines “are aligned with Gold Standard Science… with a focus on protecting people and the environment while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.”
The department has already chosen to discard the long-established radiation protection principle called “ALARA”—the “As Low As Reasonably Achievable” standard—which tells anyone working with radioactive materials to limit exposure.
It frequently pushes exposures well below legal limits. While many specialists acknowledged that ALARA can be enforced too rigidly at times, the decision to remove it altogether drew opposition from numerous leading radiation health experts.
Sources close to the discussions said it remains uncertain whether the agencies will actually revise the legal limits for radiation exposure.
Internal DOE documents advocating for changes to dose rules cite a report produced by the Idaho National Laboratory that was assembled with assistance from the AI tool Claude. “It’s really strange,” said Kathryn Higley, president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, a congressionally chartered organization that studies radiation safety. “They fundamentally mistake the science.”
John Wagner, director of the Idaho National Laboratory and the report’s lead author, acknowledged to ProPublica that the science around changing radiation exposure rules is hotly debated. “We recognize that respected experts interpret aspects of this literature differently,” he wrote. He said his analysis was not intended as the final verdict, but was “intended to inform debate.”
Because the effects of very low radiation doses are difficult to quantify, the U.S. has historically taken a cautious stance. Raising dose limits could put the United States out of step with international norms.
Cohen has told the nuclear industry he views his role as ensuring the government “is no longer a barrier” to them.
In June, he dismissed the idea of companies contributing to a fund for workplace accidents. “Put yourself in the shoes of one of these startups,” he said. “They’re raising hundreds of millions of dollars to do this. And then they would have to go to their VCs and their board and say, listen, guys, we actually need a few hundred million dollars more to put into a trust fund?”
He also suggested regulators should not worry about preparing for so-called 100-year events—disasters that have roughly a 1 percent chance of occurring but can be catastrophic for nuclear facilities.
“When SpaceX started building rockets, they sort of expected the first ones to blow up,” he said.
This story first ran on ProPublica.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Read the original story here. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to have stories like this delivered to your inbox.
Pratheek Rebala and Kirsten Berg provided research assistance.
