Alfred Meyer, long active in Physicians for Social Responsibility and former co-chair of its Radiation and Health Committee, challenged an article in the July 3 New York Times, headlined “US to Overhaul Radiation Safety Rules to Spur Nuclear Expansion.”
In a July 6 letter to the article’s author, Brad Plumer, Meyer wrote:
When I read the New York Times business page, I assume that there is a high level of investigative journalism being presented so that the news I read will present thorough and well-researched information about the topic at hand. This is not the case with this article.
Plumer began his piece by paraphrasing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposal on July 1 to overhaul its safety rules for radiation exposure at nuclear power plants. As he put it, the commission was concerned by the cost of the regulations and their tendency to “go beyond what is needed to protect human health.”
The NRC’s proposal asserted that current regulations often incur additional costs “without a measurable safety benefit”—for example, Plumer supplied, when regulators install additional equipment at plants in order to push radiation exposure “far below the legal limits.” Maximum dose limits, the agency said, are already set “well below levels associated with known health effects.”
Hellbound and Down 