A Night with the Experts ft: David Lochbaum
💻Topic: Executive Order 14300 - Asked and Answered: Exposing Trump’s efforts to relax radiation protection regulations protecting nuclear workers and the public.
📅Date: Thursday, April 30
⏰Time: 5pm PT
📍Where: Zoom
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A Night with the Experts
ft. David Lochbaum
Nuclear Engineer, Nuclear Safety Expert, Consultant, Author
Speaking on:
Executive Order 14300 - Asked and Answered
Exposing Trump's efforts to relax radiation protection regulations
Registration for the Zoom Link is required: click here
In March 2025, President Trump signed EO 14300 directing the NRC to relax the radiation protection regulations protecting nuclear workers and the public. This EO asserted that the existing regulations relied on the false premise of the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) and associated As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) measures. The EO also directed the NRC to work with federal partners like DOE.
But those very measures had been challenged in February 2015. The NRC received three petitions for rulemaking seeking to remove LNT and ALARA.
The NRC denied all three petitions in June 2021 in a 50-plus page report. The NRC's denial cited numerous studies that all concluded that the LNT and ALARA were the proper means of protecting against radiation hazards. EO 14300 did not cite any studies or science emerging since the NRC shot down the earlier attempts to cut LNT and ALARA.
Through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) and Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), more than $33 billion had been paid out to victims of radiation exposures from being downwind of nuclear bomb testing or working at nuclear weapons facilities. The US Congress found that 98 percent of the radiation-related illnesses and deaths resulted from radiation exposures LESS than the federal limits. This evidence strongly suggests that the existing radiation protection limits are non-conservative and certainly do not support raising the limits to harm even more Americans.
David Lochbaum received a nuclear engineering degree from The University of Tennessee in June 1979 and began working in the U.S. nuclear power industry. He worked in the nuclear power industry for 17 years as a reactor engineer, shift technical advisor, system engineer, licensing engineer, and consultant.
While working on a power uprate project for a nuclear plant, he and a colleague identified a safety problem with onsite spent fuel storage. When the concerns were dismissed by the plant’s owner, they raised the issue with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). When the NRC slow-walked the matter, they went to Congressional committees that oversee the NRC. Lochbaum authored the book Nuclear Waste Disposal Crisis about the concern and campaign to resolve it.