From Committee to Bridge the Gap
July 15

This summer, we need your help, and this page will show you how.

An executive order from May 2025 urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to abandon the well-established radiation science in favor of weakening radiation protection standards. The current U.S. radiation standards are already outdated and fail to offer adequate public health protection; now, the NRC’s proposed rule (NRC-2025-1140) plans to weaken those standards even further. NRC’s radiation protection standards are referenced and utilized widely, so any weakening of these standards would result in system-wide increases in radiation exposure.

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Comments are due 08/31/2026 at 11:59 pm EST.

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Effects of Weakening Radiation Protection Standards:

• More radioactive pollution in our air, food, and water. (President Trump’s radical attack on radiation safety) (Dan Hirsch presents to the NRC)
• Increased allowable radiation in the consumer goods supply, radioactive materials being made into everyday items like cookware, dental fillings, zippers, and glasses. (Radioactive Waste “Recycling” Into the Free Market)
• More radiation emissions and pollution allowed across nuclear facilities, including toxic waste sites, power plants, uranium mines, etc. (EO 14300)
• Radioactively contaminated sites that already exist in the U.S. would not get cleaned up. (EO 14300)
• Worse health impacts for women, children, and marginalized communities. (Disproportionate impact of radiation and radiation regulation)

Here are the Facts:

• Radioactive exposure causes cellular damage. Radioactive exposure can lead to cancer, heart disease, infertility, loss of pregnancy, birth defects, cardiovascular disease, and auto-immune diseases. (Beir VII)
• Increasing the permitted radiation exposure standards allows the nuclear industry to generate more radioactive pollution —and more profit. This blatant attempt to make industry money by allowing more harmful radiation pollution exposure to the public is outrageous. (EO 14300)
•  All radioactive exposure is harmful, exposure adds up over your lifetime and across generations. (Disproportionate Impacts of Radiation Exposure on Women, Children, and Pregnancy: Taking Back our Narrative)
• The current standards are based on an adult male body—not women, not children, not girls. Girls face higher lifetime cancer risks. Pregnancy exposures can affect three generations at once. (Disproportionate impact of radiation and radiation regulation)
• President Trump signing an EO does not change the science or the risks to the public. The NRC should follow the science, not a political agenda.
• NRC’s Proposed Rules eliminate the longstanding As Low As Reasonable Achievable standard, also known as ALARA. (Federal Register / Vol. 91, No. 134 p. 43463)
• NRC’s Proposed Rules allow workers to be exposed to 2 times the current yearly occupational limit, as long as the total exposure over 5 years is under 25 rem. (Federal Register / Vol. 91, No. 134 p. 43472)
• NRC’s Proposed Rules increase allowable effluent releases from nuclear facilities by 2.5 times automatically, but polluters are allowed to increase releases by 10 times with the only penalty being that the polluter must send monitoring reports to the NRC. (Federal Register / Vol. 91, No. 134 p. 43471)
• NRC’s Proposed Rules allow polluters to apply for alternative public dose limit that will be approved on a case-by-case basis, with no specified upper bound. (Federal Register / Vol. 91, No. 134 p. 43473)

https://committeetobridgethegap.org/2026/act-now-help-stop-radioactive-pollution/