Reinstate Requirements That Nuclear Energy Permitting Meet Global Standards for Nuclear Regulation 

Risk analysis frameworks for nuclear energy date back to the earliest moments of discovery at the height of the Cold War.¹ Risk and safety thresholds have developed and changed over time, substantially influenced by catastrophic disasters and the resulting shifts in public perception. President Harry S. Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons against Japan and the 1945 Trinity test nuclear fallout, which reached forty-six states over ten days, led to the establishment of radiation dose limits and targets based on the concept of the linear no-threshold model (LNT), which determined that risk increases linearly with dose, and that no level of exposure is risk-free. This model enjoys wide-ranging international consensus and is based on long-term, detailed studies. Safety analysis also developed the “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA) risk principle to ensure that catastrophic risks are kept within tolerable societal limits. Despite this, the White House’s May 2025 Executive Order recommended dismantling LNT, a key safety pillar, and its consequential standard ALARA, rejecting long-standing international consensus and increasing the public’s risk of exposure to ionizing radiation.

1. Guerra and Khlaaf, Fission for Algorithms, 7–8. ↩︎